Training Log Archive: barb

OMG I actually went running.

This morning one of my marigolds had been cut right through the stem and was lying, so sad, on its side. I looked closer and saw a big fat caterpillar like worm (a cutworm?) with its mouth right near the cut. I looked closer and saw it was stretched out dead, in rigor mortis. Perhaps what they say about marigolds protecting tomato plants is true! Then I fed the dead grub to Raspberry. Then I worried that she'd get sick from it. Then I figured it was unlikely since chickens can supposedly eat all sorts of things. ...[google]... Oh, humans can eat marigolds. Chickens can too.

This afternoon a couple women came over and filmed the chickens and the kids and the actress playing the lead role in a made-for-cable movie that they're making. She loses her job, walks past a yard with some chickens, asks the kids questions about their chickens, and decides she's going to raise chickens for eggs.

Jamie & Nate came over too. Jamie brought this cool device for figuring out how much sun a given location gets at different times of the year.



(Click the photo below for bigger picture)



You level it with a bubble level in the center. There is a compass to line it up to magnetic north. It works in a narrow range of latitudes. You can see in the reflective curved plastic top the reflection of what is around you, and in particular where the device can see open sky. There are markings for different times of the day at different parts of the year. From just this photo, you can figure out the whole sun situation for the whole year. Jamie is hopefully going to install solar hot water for us, on our roof.

A few garden shots:

Rooftop container


Second rooftop container, planted more recently


How we get up to the roof garden


Main garden


Kale


Lettuces in the foreground, peas in the background

C • be careful! 2

We watched "Good Night and Good Luck" last night. (Why is it in black and white? the kids asked.) We cheered when Senator Symington was mentioned. (He's the great-grandfather of Harriet whose room I stayed in a few days ago.)

To school to meet with Linnaea about orienteering next year with her class.

A second trip to school to interview some kids for a little end of year teacher retirement project.

school, work...

Through Harvard Square with swarms of graduates. Brought a lump to my throat. And Chu is speaking - science is "in" again...

It's the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I was at Tiananmen Square about a week before the massacre happened. I was visiting Tsinghua University with a professor friend; I think we both gave talks. Students took us on bikes through the streets of Beijing to the Square, and vouched for us so we could go into the Square controlled by students. It was enormous and brimming with people, like this:


(source)

I remember crowds and the city buses and groups with flags, maybe some medical units, making their way through all the people.

It was exciting to read about developments in the days before we left the US to come to China - so much hope for change, and people finding their voices.

We left Beijing and traveled to Kunming where Mom and Dad were teaching English. We were on a trip with them to Dali June 3rd, returning June 4th on a bus. As we drove, there was a lot of chatter between the bus driver and the people in the villages we passed. Everyone seemed grouped around TVs. We slowly figured out that something bad had happened.

Back at the school, classes quickly came to a halt. We learned more about what was going on from Voice of America radio. There was some anti-foreigner sentiment. Soldiers marched in the streets. TV showed, nonstop, images of burned buses and charred bodies and talked of insurgents having to be put down (that would be the students but they were not spoken of as students). After a week or so of waiting in limbo, the foreign teachers arranged passage out of China, and so Mom and Dad left with us. Dad in particular felt bad about cutting and running this way - but classes were not being held and the others wanted to leave. No one knew what was going to happen next. Another cultural revolution of sorts? Nothing? Were we in danger? Everything seemed poised, waiting. I passed some of the time helping graduate student Hans measure the plants he was growing on a rooftop for some plant biology experiment.

Mom and Dad said goodbye to their favorite students and the Chinese faculty friends they'd made, and we escaped via Hong Kong and Hawaii.

I had sent postcards to a few friends from Beijing: "Hi! Just went to Tiananmen Square, and it was AMAZING! Wish you were here!" They all got the postcards just after the massacre, and were a little worried...

C • Thanks... 2

School, work, home, work, home

So while I was off in DC, the rest of the family went to Nobscot for the local O meet. David went out on orange but could not find the first control, and spent about an hour on it. It's his 3rd orange course; he finished the first no problem, and got about half of the controls on the 2nd. So he's going rapidly downhill. I guess the trails were confusing near the start.

The lady from whom we purchased our organic veggies in Phoenix, conviently located near the airport:


On a hike in AZ


Sunrise in Acadia


Isabel climbing in Acadia


David


Some of the people Nancy & J-J could have hung out with in Acadia if only we'd known they were a few dozen meters away...


And more...

C • And here's one of several t... 1

Today's photo essay: "Portrait of Harriet('s room)"
(Where I stayed last night. Harriet is in 6th grade.)

Her art









Her room is dominated by the big wrestling mat on the floor



Wrestling medals



Portrait of Harriet the wrestler



A bunch of photos in which her face has been photoshopped onto other bodies, gag gift from some bat mitzvah



Boy pix over the bed



Family photos



Family tree



Photo of her dad (the little boy), her grandfather and her great-grandfather, I think at a baseball game.



Herself, with brother

Home from airport on a fine Monday evening.

When I set out at 7pm, the sun was four fingers above the horizon, enough to get me home. I had a slight navigational hiccup, turning left too early into some rental car return areas instead of into the later one. In East Boston I rode past "My Pueblito", a cute little restaurant that is open during road construction. In Chelsea there was a roadside fruit and vegetable stand set up amidst all the produce warehouses and trucks. I slowed but did not stop. Next to the junkyard, and across from the power plant, a bunch of boys were playing soccer. Near the river I saw several families of geese - lots of young ones.

Got up at 4:25 am, showered, packed, and biked to the airport. At 8:30 am I was in Dulles, holding a DD ice coffee I purchased at Logan, that still had ice clinking around in it.

I was highly unprepared for this trip - around midnight I checked the O situation for today at the DVOA website and realized my O friends in the DC area might travel up to north of Baltimore for some meet that I wasn't going to have time to get to. So instead of trying to figure out how to contact you all, I sent email to my friends the Symingtons who live in Bethesda to say I'd stay with them tonight. I drove to their house this morning and found out the twins (juniors in high school) were heading out to a soccer game, coached by their mom. So I came along and it was awesome; those kids are SUCH amazing players - it was really really good soccer. Some absolutely beautiful ball handling, and great teamwork. They won 8-3, so I got to see some sweet goals as well.



Took a few photos on the bike ride to the airport.

Note the Tobin bridge in the background on the right, seen from the west since you have to go way around by bike.









This photo doesn't do it justice, but the potholes are so bad that the taxis slow way down and weave all over to avoid them.



After the power plant, I bike past a lot of produce warehouses





Another bridge, into East Boston



Now I can see the Tobin bridge from the east

C • Sorry we missed you! 1