Henry the boy King and PROMS

Voyage to Stratford-upon-Avon (shakespeare's birthplace) to see Henry VI, part III. I had never heard of Henry VI, much less a story that involved three parts. But the RSC is offering free tickets to people under 30, for the Courtyard Theatre. They are putting on the complete works throughout this year, so we went to see this little-known show.

To my delight, it was fabulous. It was really well done, well choreagraphed. The acting was superb. Henry VI was crowned King when he was 6 months old, and there was a prophesy that he was doomed to fail. Meanwhile, this is the point in time when Richard of York - who will become Richard III, is rising to the scene, fighting in the War of the Roses against Henry's clan. Richard is wicked, tortmented, disfigured and pathetic - all acted superbly. The set was minimal, with nice rust-brushed metal for the floor and tower backdrop. Lots of fighting and blood, but it was as well done as this can be without eliminating it. I also like the power-hungry Queen Margaret - she was a better sword-fighter than Henry was! She wore a tweed dress with a high collar and a sword belt holster. She was fearsome. All in all, they did an excellent job and there was no problem at all following the story. It makes me remember why i love Shakespeare - to see a really well executed show.

Last night was Proms at Royal Albert Hall. This is a summer music extravaganza - there's a concert EVERY DAY for two months. Its classical music, and its incredible. It was created to make classical music accessible to the common people - cheap tickets and great music. What could be better? For 5 pounds, we walked in and sat in about the third row for a Haydn piece and two Mozart pieces, full ensemble and full chorus. It was spectacular, and i plan to go again. It also happens to take place about a block away from the Natural History Museum, where i am many days. Perfect. Nice diversions!

Open Letter to Dave Para

Dear Dave,
You never say all the things you want to before its too late. I wanted to tell you how much i love you, how much you’ve given me as a friend. There is a piece of the world missing without you in it. I can’t believe i won’t be seeing you again. I hope we meet again in another lifetime.

One of my first memories of you is seeing you on the front lawn at Boulder High School, 9th grade, 1990. You always wore the red bandana, tied at four corners in knots, a funny hippie-hat. You had long curly hair, always covered by the bandana. But the bandana that earned you the name “bandana-man” among the freshman girls didn’t hide your dimples or your infectious smile and positive attitude. We became friends, and our groups of friends were friends. There were tie-dye shirts, Led Zeppelin and the journey to Vail in my blue blazer (Towanda, rah!). You taught me how to ride the back bowls, and tried stupid tricks on your snowboard. You showed me Monkey’s Traverse on Flagstaff. You always wore shorts to school, even during the cold of winter. We wondered if you even owned a pair of pants.

Remember after you got back from traveling in Australia and New Zealand? You told me about Tasmanian Devils (sound effects included) and Nutella and rainbow-striped long johns and feral kids. You told me that you used to drive pedal cab in Seattle, where you rented the bike-cab from a company, and got to keep all the money you made. So instead of charging a flat fee for service, you asked passengers to pay what they thought the ride was worth. When you started flight school, you worked really hard. You studied and borrowed and made sacrifices. You were really passionate about flying and becoming a serious pilot, which you did. I’m sorry it ended this way, but just think: at least it happened in Indian Peaks Wilderness – a beautiful place where you had spent a lot of time.

I loved your girlfriends, without fail. You chose to be with people that were beautiful and talented and wanted to save the world one day at a time, with smiles and creativity. Margaret, Julie, and Bree stand out especially. When i first met Julie i thought you had met your equal – she was as tall as you were short, she had crazier hair than you did, she wore mismatched and second-hand items just like you did! Then later, when you and Bree started going out, you showed me the little monster-pillow guy she had made for you, and i knew she was a great match for you.

I will miss you because you named your bike after your sister Miranda, and you tied streamers to the ends of the handlebars. I will miss your love of musicals: you liked the idea of people suddenly breaking out into song and dance when things get rough or sappy. I will miss you because you considered my pleas for you to join Cirque du Soleil, prompted by me seeing it for the first time. When i told you i was applying to Oxford for grad school, we laughed because you were wearing an Oxford sweatshirt – except you had gotten it from the free box or as a hand-me-down – not because you really wanted to wear something that said Oxford. You wished me luck all the same, and i was still expecting you to be ready to go to the jungle with me when i got back to go save biodiversity and All Things Good.

I was looking forward to seeing you again, to hearing about your life in the past year. I was looking forward to meeting your future kids one day. I was wondering how we could get you a plane so you could fly trips to aid conservation. I was hoping you could show me how to swing fire poi. I wanted to tell you about biodiversity and herbaria and nudibranches and rowing and sufjan stevens; food politics and Snowdonia and my nieces and Oostvaderplassen. One of the last times i saw you, we went to see Sweet Honey in the Rock at the Boulder Theater. Its somehow appropriate because their music helps me through the sadness of losing you. I know we all die, and we have talked about it, but i just didn’t get as much time as i would have liked with you. I would have liked to tell you one last time how great you are, what a blessing you are and how bright your light was you shone on the world. You were always there for me, even when we didn’t see each other for months at a time. I will miss you Billy D. I will miss your light in my life, and in the world, but i will try to continue to dance and celebrate as i know you’d want me to.

Love,
nomes

(for more info see http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4119473# . to all Dave’s friends and family, i am with you in attention and intention. i wish i could be there with you now. we will get through this.)

Good customer service! In England!

In response to my English friends feeling somewhat slighted by the England day = bad day comment (sorry guys, you know its not personal), i have a GOOD story! I will even consider renouncing my definition of an England day. Here's the story: i needed to return some headphones i bought through Amazon.co.uk. You can track all of your orders, and see your account history online. When i went to find out where to call - since the headphones are outside the 30-day return period - after some searching i came across a "contact customer service" link. When you go to click on "call customer support", you type your number into a box, and THEY call you right back! Its brilliant, because all mobile phones (and land lines, for that matter) charge for outgoing calls but not incoming! So you don't have to waste your minutes calling customer service! Amazon.co.uk has renewed my faith that there IS such a thing as good English customer service - also they resolved my issue, and said they'd send me a replacement for my faulty headphones. I stand (somewhat) corrected - before i renounce my definition, i should point out that Amazon was originally an - ahem - American company. So - i'll gather more evidence and renounce if necessary. Until then, let it be known that not all companies are party to the VORTEX of black-hole customer service in England.

Notes from the Tube

More happenings on the tube: in addition to the earlier post about women applying makeup on the tube, i saw the most incredible one the other day. This woman was painting her nails, standing up, on the train. Fire engine red. Good god. She did a decent job too. Good thing she didn't have this happen:

Yesterday i lost my footing on the train, and fell into someone's lap. Full on, complete fall with my bag in their face, sort of straddling two passengers. They were very nice about it, but the fact was i was the one at fault. I wasn't holding on, i was getting out my reading material, and the train lurched and i teetered, and there was no bar to grab onto, and nowhere to balance my feet. I just fell backward onto some laps. The guy was really nice, but i was mortified and the woman was possibly tying not to scream because i might have smashed her toes in her flip-flops. What do you do? I apologized profusely, but its kind of like "hey, sorry for being such an asshole" and then what? Anyway, the moral of the story is: don't stand on the tube without holding on. Unless the train is so crowded that you can't move and if it lurches the crowd will "catch" you - don't do it. Its not worth the embarrassment or the potential for damaged body parts.

One of those "England" days

Lets start with the good news: i recovered my phone. It was lost, and then it miraculously was turned in and now i am reunited with this small piece of critical equiptment. Thank you to the lost-item gods.

Now, on to the black-hole effect that i encounter in England on a regular basis.

After i got to the museum on Monday, i realized that the missing phone had indeed not been left there. I promptly called the Oxford Bus Company to see if anything had been turned in. Lo and behold, the woman on the other end of the line said, yes, a phone matching that description WAS turned in, and she would go and get it to verify it was mine! Hurrah - until i was put on "hold" (the handset of the phone was simply set down on the counter). For about 10 agonizing minutes, i could hear that the woman had returned with an object (said phone) and was talking to a colleague (now an assumed Monster or Man-in-Black perhaps) about their weekends and their kids and their next holiday. At some point i started asking, loudly, if they could hear me - had they forgotten about me? Now i know: this is why, when you normally call the Oxford Bus Company, it takes about 5 minutes for anyone to answer the phone! Its not because, as the recorded message states, "All of their customer service representatives are very busy" - rather, they're idly chit-chatting about the weather and footie and the godawful haircut they had recently. Gah! So i chew my nails, shout occasionally into the phone, and finally, my heroine comes back. "Yes! We have your phone!" she says. I ask if she's sure - since when i had called over the weekend, there was another phone of very similar description which was NOT mine. Well, she's mostly sure, but i want to be very sure - so i ask her to turn it on and check so that i can identify the picture wallpaper. BAD idea, since this activity (presumably very simple, no?) takes another ten minutes with more evidence of office joking and chatting. After a while - meantime i had come very close to hanging up and calling back because i thought they'd forgotten about me again - she says, "Yes! We have your phone!". Great, i say and arrange to come pick it up that day, before 5 when they close. Superb.
I catch the early bus back to Oxford, and arrive at the bus station, walk into the office, and announce the purpose of my visit. The nice young woman behind the counter looks at me sympathetically, and says, "No, we don't have any phone here". I tell her, in as calm a manner as possible, that there has been some mistake, now kicking myself for not getting the woman's name i spoke with earlier. I start to think there's been some bad joke, and this bus station IS one of the portals into the Underworld or outer space. Monsters Inc is real?!
It turns out, that the lost and found is NOT LOCATED at the bus station! Its located about 30 minutes away, in south Oxford! Okay, well that would have been useful information to know, since its now ten minutes until 5, when they close. Thank god for Searle, the man at the office who takes pity on me and my plight, and agrees to let me in if i knock at the door when i arrive, as long as its before 8.30. Soon, after some suburban trekking in the industrial district (i did get to see the warehouse where Mini's are built) i arrive and am happily re-united with my phone! Hurrah! And, i am currently backing up my address book as i write.
This whole experience led me to the conclusion that things do not operate on a logical progression necessarily in England. It has to do with the ideas of customer service, and providing the necessary information in a logical way. When this effect is most pronounced, i know its been an "England" day - things work out, but in a needlessly circuitous, frustrating fashion. Maybe this happens everywhere, or maybe England just has more portals into the Otherworlds that i've heard and read so much about. I prefer to think its the latter (witness the Plant Sciences Library as well, and O2, and the Royal Mail and the OUCE IT department, and, and...). Of course there are exceptions like The Alternative Tuck Shop (are they efficient or WHAT?) and the London Tube system, but if we assemble all the data, there seems to be something going on here. All makes me more thankful that anything ever really happens or manages to work properly.

An unexplored planet teeming with new lifeforms

Searching for Mina Carlota, Cuba, i came across this little gem from E.O. Wilson, who surely should be knighted by now for his incredible service to our discipline. My favorite is this passage, written in response to the amazing diversity and species he was seeing in New Caledonia:

• "Take me, Lord, to an unexplored planet teeming with new life forms. Put me at the edge of virgin swampland dotted with hummocks of high ground, let me saunter at my own pace across it and up the nearest mountain ridge, in due course to cross over to the far slope in search of more distant swamps, grasslands, and ranges. Let me be the Carolus Linnaeus of this world, bearing no more than specimen boxes, botanical canister, hand lens, notebooks, but allowed not Fears but centuries of time. And should I somehow tire of the land, let me embark on the sea in search of new islands and archipelagoes. Let me go alone, at least for a while, and I will report to You and loved ones at intervals and I will publish reports on my discoveries for colleagues. For if it was You who gave me this spirit, then devise the appropriate reward for its virtuous use...."

There is something incredible and moving about seeing, touching, smelling, hearing something new and extraordinary. Put many of those things together at once and we experience...awe, beauty, fear, inspiration? Maybe this is why so many people describe feeling "more alive" in the wilderness. Thanks, Guru Wilson!

Seven seven

The museum observed two minutes of silence yesterday at noon in rememberance of the 7/7 bombings last year in London. I gathered with maybe two hundred people: visitors, staff, directors, contractors in the central hall. There was an announcement and a low hush spread over the crowd. As i looked around, i realized that the number of people standing together is only a fraction of the number of people injured by the blasts. It is such a heavy and tragic feeling, to confront the sudden deaths and numbers of people killed and injured. It made the knowledge of the 7/7 evenets feel much more weighty, real - the victims were robbed of their lives, and the ripples were intense through the fabric of society.

I do believe that we can, and will, find ways to stop killing and harming each other. Saving all sentient beings from suffering is our goal. If we move toward that, we fix everything, including environmental and social problems. Environmental conservation IS about social values shifting, and as Jared Diamond so thoroughly illustrates, all environmental degredation has been one of the pillars leading to societal collapse in history. So in order for anything to change, everything has to change, and everyone has to do their part. Listen, good people: continue to be the change you wish to see in the world, especially in the face of adversity.

More on evolution

After i posted the questions about plant evolution, i got some answers in the form of lectures given by distinguished researchers. At the Natural History Museum, Dr. Ansell has done research into the chloroplast (the structure that makes plants green and is responsible for photosynthesis) genome. He says, roughly, that the genome is much more highly complex and variable than we previously thought, and that the variation within that DNA could be responsible for the extraordinary speciation we see in vascular plants.

Dr. Rieseberg, of Univ. of British Columbia, then gave an outstanding lecture which i attended, about the mechanisms of speciation in plants. He discussed the concept of a species, and systematically proved that its a good concept for plants (as has been debated and questioned by botanists since Darwin's time). He also talks about the spread of "advantageous mutations" and tested the inheritance of certain genetic traits in widespread plants. His conclusion is that a "species" is likely reinforced, or encouraged to remain separate from other similar plants, by the spread of advantageous mutations.

Which brings me to some speculative points:
Polunin says there are several "eras" or heydays of taxa: these are times when the organisms flourished, diversified, and occupied much of the planet. So the first heyday (in the early Paleozoic) was Fishes and Ferns. Then in the Mesozoic period was the rise of the Reptiles (including dinosaurs) and Gymnosperms. Now in the Cenozoic, we're in the age of Mammals (including us) and Angiosperms. My theory is that these explosions of proliferation and diversity among taxa have to do with the most available resources (water, heat, food), and with mutual benefits. So maybe its no accident that mammals and all animals depend on higher plants for their source of respiration: oxygen. And likewise, plants use what we breathe out - and maybe this lends weight to why we see a parallel rise of these groups now. So the recent rise of mammals and angiosperms could be (partly) about mutual benefit. This would favor the advantageous mutation theory too.

Ask a big question, get a big(ger) set of questions.

You go girl

One more thing: big props to the women who apply their makeup on the Tube. Are you crazy?! I saw a woman today, painting her eyebrows in. Its a fine art, as the train jerks along and lurches, she deftly lifts the pencil from her face, and draws a line with the same pointilist method. I've seen this several times now, and i am impressed. I think it should be commissioned as performance art.

Gingko and plant evolution

The plant world is astounding. It turns out that flowering plants, angiosperms, are only at their peak in this geologic epoch. Relatively recent. Why should it be that this evolutionary mechanism (pollen and ovary reproductive structures) are the most prevelant? Is it a coincidence that Gingko biloba, when taken daily, can help with memory, while this plant is among the OLDEST living vascular plant relatives? Does it have some collective memory properties because its just been around for so long? And my book (Polunin's Plant Geography) says that plants just came up on to land at some point. Coincidence? Maybe over milennia, coincidence just morphs into evolution. Angiosperms have this complex method of reproduction, whereby the pollen grain has to find the flower of the appropriate plant (might be on another individual, far away from the origination of the pollen grain) and then, once landed on the flower, grow a pollen tube to deposit the gametes. It is just an unlikely and accident-prone system - yet somehow the earth is covered with these things! Over 250,000 species - the only other taxa with more species in it are the bugs (beetles in fact). So maybe the question becomes: why angiosperms and beetles? I guess the answer for now is, why not?

How to have cream tea

Good things happen every day.

Today there was cream tea, and lots of sun and another job application (Kew) in the mail.

As for the cream tea, there are some certain things that pertain. First, i can verify that the V&A does indeed do a nice cream tea. Cream tea is usually taken in the late afternoon - say between 2.30 and 4.30. Earl grey is customary (milk in the tea is acceptable). One takes a scone, a pat or two of butter, a healthy helping of jam - strawberry, but today there was also the unusual raspberry - and a splot of clotted cream. Split the scone into halves - or, as my instructor told me, "chop it into as many bits as you can, but halves at least" - spread butter, glop on some jam, spread on clotted cream, and more jam if you like. Perfect! I also learned about elevenses. Its the intaking of food (usually cream tea) at around 11 am. Its not only for hobbitses, as i thought when i first heard it - although Wikipedia informs me that it IS indeed a meal for LOTR people!

This being my second partaking of cream tea, i decided i think i've got the hang of it and i should have it MUCH more often. Thinking about that scone recipe rolling around the back of my mind. One of the things we discussed at tea was about how the farmers and peasants used to eat and drink something about every hour to keep fueled and hydrated. This got pared down into even less eating occasions, but the big meal was always at noon. So we have breakfast, elevenses, dinner (at noon), tea (food with tea in the afternoon) and supper/evening dinner. However, as industrialization occurred along with urbanization and modernization, now people tend to eat less frequently but more at one time, and cream tea is for fun or sometimes instead of a coffee break. Regardless, it is fun and i recommend it, as well as the V&A.

Also i am reading Collapse. Just finished the chapter on Montana and started on Easter Island. Its interesting, and the outline of Montana's problems (though no solutions are really given) is indicative of some of the widespread problems throughout the Intermountain West.

Disturbance hypothesis

Graduate school in my life is analagous to disturbance in an ecological system. Its disruptive, its difficult, it pushes my limits, and ultimately it cleans things out and provides fertile ground for growth and change. Most ecological systems require some disturbance, or are dependent on disturbance events for some piece of their functioning (fire, flood, wind, etc). Maybe it makes sense, then, that so many people choose to subject themselves to the catastrophic lifestyle of graduate school. Its a challenge, it pushes us to find our limits, it expands our horizons and perspectives. Just in the meantime, we feel a bit ruffled and tousled. Yet another way the human organism is similar to the ecosystems we are part of and inhabit. Now, i just have to figure out how publishing work fits into this scheme of lunacy?

Wales!

Rock-biter territory
Originally uploaded by n_yoder.

Two weekends ago, went to Wales (Snowdonia) for some hiking, hut-living, and playing in the sun. It was perfect weather. We arrived friday night in Caroline's mighty little car, tromped about 500 yards to the cabin and made ourselves right at home. Sunny, but not too hot. We made soup:
traditional Bulgarian soup, with stinging nettles. by Antoniya
Normal soup stock (potatoes, carrots, onions)
Trim the nettles to just the new tips.
Add the nettles toward the end.
Turn off the heat, and working quickly take a bit of broth out, and add a touch of vinegar to this.
Beat in an egg quickly so the broth runs smooth. Broth should be hot, but not boiling or the egg will cook - it should "melt" into the soup.
Perfect!

Then hiking all day saturday, with spectacular views and weather (see the Flickr site for photos). Fabulous dinner at the pub where Peter had reserved a table for our weary, merry group. Then we set off Thai lanterns Peter had: they are paper cylindrical lanterns and they float into the sky under the power of a little bunson burner. Beautiful. Slept under the stars, and realized too late that the sun now rises around 4 am.

All around great trip and a highly recommended location for outdoor fun.

Celebrate 2006

Celebrate 2006
Originally uploaded by Mike Grenville.

Somehow we missed this; didn't find out about it until today. You gotta love London!

Sol Source

Photos and stories from hiking in Wales to be posted soon. It was absolutely glorious and fabulous, in sum.

In other news, i am official at the museum for the summer:
Check out the website
(don't click if you're not intested in my shameless self promotion)
Bring on the specimens! Its databasing time. Oh, and georeferencing can come too.

The boathouses were packed with people.

Saturday of Summer VIIIs

We rowed really well, we rowed really hard. We got bumped, but it was less of a defeat this time because we were just strong and managed to hold them off for a long way. We all gave it everything we had, and it was a good race.

Then we rowed home, had some drinks and threw Judy in the river. It was fabulous, and an all around excellent time.

Saturday warming up. Taken by Jessica from the bridge.

Addicted to pain and suffering

We were feeling good. Nervous, but strong and hopeful. I REALLY wanted to bump Osler-Green. We were looking good and the practice starts in the warm-up felt good. The weather had cleared up. Then somehow, things went wrong after the start gun. As we were closing on OG (which we really were, just not as fast as we'd hoped), Hertford came up behind us fast. We fought, but not hard enough, not long enough, not enough enough. We couldn't hold them off, and we conceded to them while still a length off OG.

Tough one. It sucks to be bumped. It sucks to lose. And, we tried our best. So we'll try again tomorrow, we'll brush it off, and we'll hunt down Hertford on a saturday afternoon. How does rowing (and losing) turn me into a petty revenge seeker? I do believe its an overdose of lactic acid buildup and shifty weather. Or maybe the rivermud all over my clothes, bike and backpack. Okay W1 - we know what we can do so lets ride Hertford the whole way tomorrow.

St Hildas Women's First VIII. Thursday of Summer VIIIs racing.