While the rest of the world reacted to today’s Supreme Court health care decision, we were witnessing the miracle of insect sex here in North Berkeley. To wit: Kate has been raising silkworms as part of her science teaching. We had a little plastic storage container that has become home to about a dozen silkworm cocoons, and today, silkworm moths emerged from two of them. Amazingly, or perhaps because these creatures have evolved to give themselves the best chance of procreating (or both), the two emergees were a male and female who immediately found each other and went to work mating. We’ll have some exciting video later (the picture above catches me shooting Kate recording the event with her iPad), but I have to say how impressive it is to see how quickly, purposefully and efficiently these pale, flightless creatures attended to their business. The male, the smaller of the two moths, fumbled around a little amid bouts of love grappling, but then hooked up (literally, it looks like) with his female friend (the female is at left in the photo below). Now, about an hour later, they’re quiet but still connected.
Compost Community News
The principal visible engine of decomposition in our compost is red worms. When there's a steady supply of food and water, they seem to thrive. At some times of year, I'll actually see balls of them working on some hors d'oeuvre we've dumped out there.
But other critters are at work, too. I recently came across a piece of compost literature that talked about "FBI" as the components of a healthy waste pile–fungi, bacteria, and invertebrates. I'll take it for granted that fungi and bacteria are doing their thing out there and are perfectly happy with their lot.
That leaves the invertebrates. I've mentioned the worms. We get a few flies out there, and close inspection discloses some in larval form (maggots by another name). Another population that seems to enjoy the decompositional milieu is what I believe is a form of mite. When I pull the cover off the bin in the daylight, you see them as a shiny mass shifting minutely over unidentifiable food bits and everything else. I don't know whether they're a sign that things are just fine in the compost community or a little off. They've never invited themselves inside, so they're welcome to just do what they do. (Above: the "mites" in question, feasting on a stale bread crust as nearby smallish potatoes look on. Click for larger versions of the image.)
Journal of Self-Promotion: Water and Power
A long, long time ago (sometime last fall), one of my fellow editors at KQED radio asked if I’d be interested in doing a story for a series on water and power in California. The series would look at the close relationship between water and energy in the state: on one California needs to move immense quantities of a very heavy substance over very long distances, and that requires a lot of power; and on the other, a lot of water is needed to help generate power.
To go back to last fall: Yes, I was interested. And today, a mere seven or eight months later, we have the first part of the series. If you wonder what I sound like climbing a steep hill with 60-some pounds on my back, it’s a must-listen.
Front-Porch Visitor
This specimen, an Indian Walking Stick, showed up on the front porch this past Tuesday (Election Day). Or maybe it was there earlier and we took no notice. It’s certainly unobtrusive. In fact, we didn’t try to identify it until today. And when we did, we found out that this is an exotic and not entirely welcome transplant to California. Here’ s an excerpt from a UC Davis writeup:
“Walking stick insects, order Phasmatodea, are mostly tropical insects that are considered an entomological curiosity because of their remarkable mimicry of twigs and leaves. Several species are popular in the pet trade and for grade school demonstrations and thus get moved extensively with some, such as the Indian walking stick insect, Carausius morosus, becoming established in many parts of the world. The Indian walking stick is native to southern India, but the precise time of its establishment in California is unknown; the first official finding occurred in San Diego County in 1991 and shortly thereafter in San Luis Obispo County. There has been an increase in homeowner reports of walking stick damage in the last 10 years along the Central and Southern coasts of the state.”
Kate has, in a science-teacherly way, captured the Walking Stick, put it in a small terrarium with some fresh leaves. It appeared to have deposited about a dozen eggs on the porch floor, immediately below where it was just hanging out on the wall. She scooped up those, too. Now we’ll wait and see nature take its course.”
Hill Climb
Yesterday, to demonstrate a point–water is heavy and it takes a lot of energy to move it–I walked with a cubic foot of water on my back up Marin Avenue, a well-known hill here in Berkeley. A cubic foot of water is 62.4 pounds. To get it into a relatively manageable state–water has a mind of its own and is the ultimate shape-shifter when you try to confine it–I poured a couple gallons of water into several reasonably leak-proof plastic bags, double-bagged those bags, then put the bags into a single-compartment backpack. In the event, I had some leakage, but I’m pretty confident from weighing things out the gross mass of what I was hauling was pretty close to 62 pounds.
I chose Marin and a single cubic foot of water as a humble analog for a famous section of California’s State Water Project. Down below Bakersfield, the SWP has a facility called the Edmonston Pumping Plant. It’s job: Move water that’s been pumped uphill from the San Joaquin Valley up and over the Tehachapi Mountains. “Move water” is a bit of an understatement. Edmonston’s big lift blasts water from a battery of 14 pumps up 1,920 feet, over the top of the Tehachapis, through several miles of underground pipelines. It’s a waterfall in reverse–4,450 cubic feet per second, 2 million gallons a minute–made to defy gravity. Once it’s over the top, the water flows into a network of aqueducts and reservoirs for mostly residential customers throughout Southern California.
So, my single cubic foot of water, going up 650 vertical feet over three-quarters of a linear mile in about 20 minutes–my power output was probably several hundred watts (I’m trying to work out a calculation, but so far I don’t believe what I see). In human terms, I was breathing hard and sweating freely before I was halfway up. I wonder if those Edmonston pumps, which each operate at 60 million watts, ever get tired.
Anyway: Above is a little bit of what the effort looked like, shot with my iPhone as I headed up Marin; below is “the top”:
Midday Deer Encounter
About 1 this afternoon, walking south on the north end of Shattuck Avenue (the end that turns into a narrow residential street in the lower hills after coursing six-lane style across downtown). The Dog was off the leash after we crossed Los Angeles Avenue, and out of nowhere (a yard, actually), this young deer landed in the middle of the street. I don’t think he (I think it’s a he) had seen the dog, because he immediately froze.
The Dog froze, too. At one point in his life I think he would have lit out after anything on four legs. But I think he gets it that if this is a squirrel, it’s a very tall, long-legged one, and he needs to watch for a while to see if a strategy suggests itself. A few seconds after the deer appeared in the street, a car arrived, too; the driver stopped to watch the show, then pulled up close to the animal to take some pictures after it had bounded up into a yard across the way. We moved on after a few minutes. Last I saw, the deer was contemplating the action on the street from a deck on top of someone’s garage.
(And yes, there was a time not too long ago when encountering a deer in the middle of the day here would have been very surprising; at dusk and after dark, not a shock. But this is the second time in the last couple of weeks I’ve happened across a young deer right around noontime. Not sure what accounts for it beyond the apparent large number of deer in the hills moving down into the city and maybe young ones out there learning the urban ropes.)
Posted in Berkeley: Lost Key
I saw the posting at left about two weeks ago on Grant Street near Ohlone Park. As part of my ongoing interest in Berkeley flier culture, it piqued my interest. I especially like the handwriting and the attempt to attach the sign to a tree with packing tape. I also noted that somebody had come by and written “thanks” on the sign, which I thought might have been an acknowledgment from he or she who lost the key. I didn’t notice when I snapped the picture that I had not captured the whole phone number.
I saw the sign at right, one of several posted in the same neighborhood, maybe a week later. I thought, “Wow, I saw those signs they’re talking about.” I took a picture, but didn’t download it from my phone right away and forgot about it. Until yesterday, when I looked at the “Lost Toyota Key” picture and went back and located the “Found Toyota Key” picture. Too bad I captured only six of 10 phone digits. I decided to call the guy who was looking for the key anyway to see if he had found it.
He had not. In fact, he was waiting for the locksmith to come and make him a new key. I told him about the (not totally amazing) coincidence of having pictures of both signs. He was excited until I told him that all I had of the phone number was “510 277.” That meant he had 10,000 possible numbers to call to find his key. I went back out to the place where I took the “found key” picture. The tape is still on the tree, but there’s no sign of the sign.
Lesson: Get the whole phone number next time.
Eclipse, Grass, Water, Rancher, Mormons
As anyone who cares knows, we in Northern California had an annular eclipse on Sunday. “Annular” means ring-shaped, and this term for an eclipse denotes one in which the moon at apogee, the highest point in its orbit relative to the Earth, crosses the sun’s disk but does not entirely block it (as it does in a true total eclipse). The result is a “ring of fire.” The sun is dimmed but still quite bright.
This is as close as I’ve ever lived to a real live total eclipse, so I took it upon myself to drive about 170 miles north into the area where the maximum annular eclipse could be observed. Those possibly wiser and possessed of less nervous energy than myself decided to stay here in Berkeley, where the eclipse was going to be about 90 percent of maximum.
Headed north on Interstate 5, I found myself imagining the gears of the solar system turning, the moon sliding invisible in the clear sky toward the brilliant sun. My idea was to get off the interstate somewhere north of the town of Willows, which was near the southern limit of the annular zone, and head east toward the foothills that rise east of the Sacramento River. I exited at County Road 7 at the northern end of Glenn County, heading over to old Highway 99, the former main route up the valley, and then noodled around on smaller roads in southern Tehama County headed toward the river. I stopped a couple of times to scope out the sun action (I was unprepared to photograph the eclipse so was depending on projecting the image onto an index card with a pair of binoculars) and take some pictures (landscape highlight: Mount Lassen in the distance). I hit one dead end, reversed field, and in due course wound up in the town of Los Molinos (“The Mills”), about 15 miles southeast of Red Bluff, as the hour of maximum eclipse neared. I found a promising-looking eastbound route called Wilson Road. A mile or two outside town, I passed an intersection marked with a “no outlet” sign, and figured I ought to park and get ready for the big moment.
The eclipse experience: The sky was noticeably darker the closer it got to the eclipse maximum. The temperature, which started out in the low 90s, seemed to fall about 10 degrees or so. Once stopped, I called home and got the Berkeley sky report as I projected the eclipse image on my little white card. Somewhere a magnificent cosmic event was taking place, but I was standing amid pastures fumbling with office supplies.
But the scene was beautiful. I heard moving water and realized a small irrigation ditch was running down one side of the road. After the eclipse maxed out and the sun started to re-emerge and the heat came back on, I snapped a few pictures. I was curious about the irrigation works, which included a few hand-operated gates. I took a few pictures of the main ditch, then walked down the road a hundred yards to where it crossed under the road and took more pictures there. After a few minutes, I heard the sound of a bike tires on gravel, and a youngish guy, say mid-30s, showed up with a little cattle dog. “Can I help you?” he asked. I was trespassing by stepping off the public road, he said. I told him I just happened to be up there looking at the eclipse and was interested in the irrigation. He looked and sounded very skeptical and almost dumbfounded when I told him I’d driven up from Berkeley. I gave him my card, which includes the name of my public-radio employer. “And what do you … do … at Northern California Public Broadcasting?” he wanted to know. His tone was what I’d imagine a government agent might hear after happening upon a still in yonder hollow. “I’m a news editor,” I said. I explained more: that I took an interest in how water works here in California, that it’s not well-enough understood, that I was familiar with some of the creeks in the area and their spring-run chinook salmon. He took all this in with an expression that said, “Uh huh.” In fact, I think he actually said, “Uh huh.” We probably talked for 15 minutes, during which time he allowed that folks in the Los Molinos area are defensive about water because people (environmentalists) are trying to take it away (to restore flows for fish and wildlife). He got a call from his wife on his cellphone and headed back up to his house. I headed back onto the road.
A car drove up. Two young guys were sitting in the front seat, wearing short-sleeve white shirts with black ties. Mormons on mission, for sure, which they confirmed when I asked them. They were curious what I was doing out there, so we talked about the eclipse. Elder Miller, who was driving, said he’d gotten a nice photo shooting through a piece of welding glass (I should have gotten a piece of welding glass). We talked a little Latter-Day Saints talk, and I tried to avoid anything that might make me look open-minded enough to consider a religious pitch. I did give them my email address, though, so Elder Miller could send me a copy of his eclipse picture. He did. (That’s it below).
I went back to my car. The sun was low enough that it was shining through the grasses along the roadside. I took a few frames (a couple examples at the top of the post). Then I was ready for the drive home.
Friday Lawn Report
It seems like just a couple weeks ago things were still a little damp from the last of our spring rains. I mowed the lawn one Sunday, then went away on a short trip. I came back to find the dry season had taken over. Our little patch of lawn in the backyard, so recently lush, was already starting to go brown. So after mowing last weekend, I broke out a sprinkler (for the back only; our scruffy front lawn is pretty much a weed patch fringed with some plantings; so much for curb appeal, but then that’s the price for my guilty relationship with outdoor water use).
After I turned the sprinkler on, I went back in the house to start coffee preparations. Looking out the kitchen window, I saw a hummingbird hovering just above the spray over the lawn. Getting a sip of water, I guess.
Preflight Vision
Off to Chicago today on a family visit. The top item on the agenda: visiting my dad, who’s in a rehab facility/nursing home on the North Side of Chicago after two bouts of pneumonia over the past couple of months (and a more general cognitive and physical decline that’s goes back much further). He’s on oxygen now, is quite weak, and really needs round-the-clock care. My sister, Ann, was visiting him yesterday and put him on the phone. He sounded tired and small. But still Dad. I’m both looking forward to seeing him and feeling a little apprehensive about it.
But first, I have a flight to catch. I always look forward to that and feel a little apprehensive about it, too. I don’t like the whole airport process. (Enough said.) I love the view of the Earth from above, even if the look you get from 35,000 feet and 550 mph tends to obscure details and prevents lingering over anything you find interesting. The shot above is from my trip with Kate to New York last August. I’m always on the lookout for geographic features, natural or manmade, to orient me–mountain ranges, rivers, cities, highways. Here, we’re passing just north of Omaha, looking south across the city’s airport, Eppley Airfield, (here’s an overhead view from Google Maps). The water there is the Missouri River, which if you remember was very high late in the spring and throughout the summer. Council Bluffs, Iowa, is across the river on the left (east), Omaha is to the right (west). That’s Interstate 680 at the bottom, built right across the flood plain. It was closed in June and essentially destroyed by the high water. The I-680 junction with I-29 is at the lower left; I-29 was also closed and needed extensive repairs. (Click the picture for larger versions.)