new bits, new pieces

December 31, 2001

This Year's Bird Sightings
Plum Island Bird List

Today's Reading
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen

This Year's Reading
2001 Book List

Photo

Big Dig crane with Xmas lights

I noticed when I picked Nancy up at the bus station on Christmas Eve that some of the Big Dig cranes were decorated with Christmas lights. They looked oddly poignant and beautiful in the fog. I didn't have my camera with me then alas. So when I finally did have my camera with me in the vicinity of the Big Dig at night, I snapped a picture. It's kind of spooky-looking like something that might appear in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Speaking of JRRT's legacy to western civilization, when I went back to put the link to the "one ring to rule them all" hack in the December 23 entry I made this weird association: My grandmother and her sister came over from Ireland as "livin'-out girls", maids to the ruling class and now in the 21st century at least one member of my family is still serving the ruling class their meals. Well, more like the ruling class in training... In my grandmother's time it was a genteel Harvard-educated ruling class of course... The brass rat had not yet become the one ring to rule them all. I don't know, it just struck me funny. I couldn't help laughing. I am the idiot, after all, who once turned to the only other other non-MIT grad in a meeting and blurted out "Hey, XX, we've been surprisingly successful considering we don't have brass rats" and cracked up laughing. (Note to DKE boys, this is supposed to be funny.)

So on yesterady's topic about high tech specimen preservation, I don't think it would work for conifers. The specimens would be too thick and I was told not to turn the specimen sheets over lest I damage fragile plant material so I'm not sure how I'd lay them on the copier. The only trees she did were deciduous and mostly leaves or very very thin branches nothing like what I was trying to do at all.

I did write on the comment card for the exhbibit that a flora of Concord should include Pinus strobus and Tsuga canadensis because they are just about the most common trees - or at least the most common conifers.

I did notice some white pines (Pinus strobus) on the museum grounds...

So New Year's Eve is like not my favorite holiday at all. Nancy and I celebrated by finally seeing The Lord of the Rings movie, which we both liked, and toasting the New Year with spiced cider.