The Elysian Fields

Rachel was one of five students selected in her class to participate in the Carbon County Envirothon. She was also selected to be the leader of her team of five - the one to have final say over the answers.

Grades 2 and 3 competed today at Mauch Chunk (that's "Mawchunk" to you non-locals, as in the City Currently Known as Jim Thorpe) lake, and her team won first place, with a score of 476. This is only the second time a class in her school has won.

The conga rats are dancing for Rachel and her teammates! =)



(And, yeah, she credits my teachings for the Forestry portion of the win...)

Only one admonition today: When passing an eighteen-wheeler, and pulling out into the other lane in front of traffic that is moving at the speed limit, it is considered unadvisable to suddenly slow down to 20 mph *below* the speed limit. My brakes thank you for your time and effort in correcting this behavior.

Still too early to tell if the cold that came with the snow caused any problem for the saucer magnolias - I've read that they tend to run a yearly race with the last frost, and either flower gloriously or become freeze-dried and die. These are becoming one of my favorite trees - which is kind of surprising as I'm not a big fan of bloom. Foliage and branching structure always held more interest for me - although these aren't too shabby on the former, and are extremely intricate and interesting on the latter, so there's hope yet.

On the subject of blooming trees, I am surprised there aren't a ton of redbuds all along my commute - maybe one, if that. They are allegedly native - if at the northernmost part of their range - here, and I remember that they looked beautiful along the roadside in Virginia and North Carolina. More people should plant them, yep, yep, yep.

On a related tangent, some pruning tips for the commonly planted forsythia: 1) Don't leave the top wider than the bottom. You'll shade the base of the shrub, which could eventually kill it. Not good. 2) Don't sheer them. They don't like it. 3) If you have to tweak and trim them at all, do so immediately after they flower. Otherwise, you won't get flowers in that section next year. Not good.

And on yet another related tangent, some advice on topping trees: Don't. If you think you need to top your trees, first try cutting your own limbs down to the nearest joint. If you really feel topping is still a good idea, take that last final cut right above the eyes - just a little off the top... Sure, trees do heal *better* than we do, but they don't like it either. It opens them for disease, it weakens their ability to gather food, and it replaces sturdy branching with weak shoots that are more likely to be damaged in storms. Best to plant the right tree in the first place, not one that you have to hack at every year or so to keep it down to size.

In unrelated, and more pleasant, news, a biplane was sighted, flying through the gap, about a hundred or so feet over the road, right over my head.

With nearly two hours of drive-time each work day, I spend a fair amount of time - for one not particularly employed to pilot a vehicle - on the road. That is to say, I spend a good deal of time attempting to avoid hitting the car that pulled out in front of me - that's 55 mile per hour me and 22.7 mile per hour him/her/it - and observing other driving patterns of Pennsylvania drivers in their unnatural habitat. Thought it was high time to start a "Feature" post on the subject, collecting bits and pieces of thoughts and observations, to generally poke fun at a variety of subjects that wander through, by, or (hopefully not) into me on my way to and from work.

So noted, it is considered unwise to ride a Japanese sports bike with an engine size in cubic centimeters that is less than what you weigh. It does not make you look cool. When that ratio slips even further, perhaps approaching or even surpassing 2:1, you have entered the realm of the ludicrous.

In the lack-of-inspiring-confidence department, there is a certain lack of safety felt when you are side-by-side and first in line at a red light with an eighteen wheeler, the cage-like trailer filled with many tubes and bottles, and placarded with words like "Flammable" and "Explosive" and "I'm so unstable, if you blink, I'll blow up." It's enough to make one crawl to the shortest possible safe distance and then run as far and fast in the opposite direction as one can go. However, when the left-turn arrow appears, and the truck starts to lurch - and is aimed quite straight ahead and *not* in the left-turn-only lane, one's heart leaps a bit and one goes a bit pale. Thankfully, you sigh, he realized the situation was not a "go" and you relax, right up until he starts to slowly roll through the red light... there was, luckily, no one in the opposing direction in their left-turn lane. I'm sure someone rocketing down that road and swinging left on their signal would not expect to find their front-end crunched under a trailer and a full load of Things That Shouldn't Be Disturbed becoming Very Disturbed.

In the last five minutes of the ride in this morning, I saw no less than six folks having nice conversations on their cells - all large SUVs, one male, and one (the guy) with a passenger in the vehicle who could have been doing the talking. One woman was very animated, and I watched, at the red light, how she gazed off the side, thoroughly engrossed in the conversation. No surprise she fell behind quite a bit when the light changed. I wonder if the old line about being so poor you can't afford to pay attention applies to those who drive Lincoln Navigators and Mercedes SUVs and the like? I think it does, it just refers to quality rather than the monetary.

One biplane sighted this morning, circling low through the gap and either heading to ground or to the other ridge line - didn't stick around to find out which. Didn't see any on the ride home last evening. Every time I see them up along the very top of the ridge - which really is where they're focusing their reseeding efforts - I wonder if folks wandering thetrail get a bit of a surprise dusting...

luis_mw led me to this article in his post from earlier today.

I'm hopeful that Pennsylvania will jump in, and not just remain as "an observer" to the initiative.

Then again, I'm hoping that serious inroads are made on alternative fuels, restoration of natural habitats, and more sane methods of agriculture are encouraged.

Oh, yeah, and that developers who clear cut the land or homeowners who top trees have their limbs and/or heads lopped off to see if it proves as much an improvement for their appearance and well-being as it does for their landscapes.

I'm extremely interested in alternate sources of electricity generation - although I am not a proponent of any *one* form - and thus found this article on wind power exceedingly interesting.

I've discussed at length in many essays (most now lost - at least for a time - on obscure, injured hardware and systems; the one accessible exception being On Artificial Intelligence & Machine Men) what happens when you create a binary construct. The system that results does not represent the actuality - it becomes truly artificial, and creates an imbalance.

What, exactly, does this have to do with alternative energy sources?

Unfortunately, people tend to be in the "all or nothing" camp much more than in "moderation". Ah, fossil fuels no good? Build windmills anywhere and everywhere! And, as the study mentioned in the article, there appears to be an impact on the environment from this "big shift" to use "large-scale" wind farms of "behemoth windmills". This results in the same sort of dynamics and black-and-white thinking that come from binary structures.

I'm sure there's an impact on the environment from replacing what might have been a forested (or at least, a grass-covered) hillside with solar panels. And the various methods of generating electricity from the flow of waves would probably butt heads (perhaps literally) with dolphins, whales, and others who might not appreciate a solid roof, at least in part, over their heads.

I believe that research should be made to increase the efficiency of devices (such as solar cells) and to reduce the impact of such devices on the environment - to allow such devices to be easily and economically viable on a small and local scale.

That removes some - or all - of the power (literally & figuratively) from utility companies, which might be seen as an excellent goal in and of itself. However, not that I'd mind being released from monthly bills to keep the current flowing, that would not be the prime benefit from such diversification. It would, unfortunately, most likely become the political centerpiece of any such dialog.