Is it really so weird?

Some time ago I was walking with my assistant across the university campus where we work. My assistant is a woman in her early 30s, exceptionally intelligent (and smart, too), and working steadily on completing her postponed college degree. Someone walked by with an irresistibly cute dog so we stopped to pat it; the owner declared the dog to be a labradoodle, a newly established breed created by crossing a standard poodle with a labrador retriever. As we went on our way, my assistant harrumphed, expressing the feeling that it’s “just not right” and “weird” to make new animal types by mixing existing breeds. Though it almost sounded like it, I am sure the origin of this was not some unconscious feelings about miscegenation–she herself is in a mixed-race marriage and has children. So where does this discomfort come from? I reminded her that all domestic dog breeds arose from the manipulation of man, and only the manipulation of man. Compare baseline domesticated dogs to the chihuahuas, beagles, german shepherds, and great danes, not to mention labradoodles, that everyone is familiar with, and think about how they came to their unique characteristics, I urged.
The other morning there was a piece on NPR about genetically modified corn and other crops, and world-wide concerns about using engineered seed stocks because of the potential–or likelihood–that the DNA of natively-developed hybrids would become contaminated by the introduced varieties through cross-pollination. While there are very important issues swirling around still to be satisfactorily answered (such as genetic contamination not just of endemic cultivars, but of native wild plants), all other things aside, the genetic modifications clearly vastly improve the ratio of usable to unusable yield and in many cases (e.g., golden rice) also truly enhance the nutritive value of food products in areas of the world where it is most urgently needed.
After all, though, genetic modifications developed in sophisticated university and corporate laboratories are driven by the same needs and result in the same kinds of improvements corn- and other crop-growers achieved so very laboriously through the ages, only at speed that is like lightning in comparison, and with a priori aims defined with razor-sharp precision. See http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/158/2/487 for more history of the pre-Columbian development of maize/corn, for instance.
I’m not a scientist, not even an amateur expert on such matters. But I do think keeping issues like genetic manipulation and hybridization, that seem to make people so nervous, in historical and geographical perspective would go a long way towards rational discussion and ultimately, expediting improvement of the human condition.

(Labradoodle image borrowed from Valley View Dogs, thank you.)

Where are they hiding all the kitty litter??

Is it just me? Do they hide the 25 lb bags of generic, unscented kitty litter when they see me coming? Yesterday my friendly local Wal-Mart had none; the Ultra Foods mega-grocery store next door was all out. Today, the Jewel store on Roosevelt Road had none either. I think it is a conspiracy and CNN better get on the stick!!

Gosh, I better get going and check things out south of the Equator!

1. Chongqing, China


2. Hong Kong, China


3. Suzhou, China


4. Bruges, Belgium


5. Granada, Spain


6. Interlaken, Switzerland


7. Zermatt, Switzerland


8. Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico


9. Banff, Alberta, Canada


10. Jasper, Alberta, Canada


11. Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada


12. Tofino, British Columbia, Canada


13. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada


14. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada


15. Quebec City, Quebec, Canada


16. Cambria, CA, USA


17. Death Valley National Park, CA, USA


18. Palm Springs, CA, USA


19. Tarpon Springs, FL, USA


20. Bloomington, IN, USA


21. Indianapolis, IN, USA


22. Martha's Vineyard, MA, USA


23. Bozeman, MT, USA


24. Gardiner, MT, USA


25. Pray, MT, USA


26. Red Lodge, MT, USA


27. West Yellowstone, MT, USA


28. Albuquerque, NM, USA


29. Laguna, NM, USA


30. Santa Fe, NM, USA


31. Taos, NM, USA


32. Badlands National Park, SD, USA


33. Custer, SD, USA


34. Big Bend National Park, TX, USA


35. Escalante, UT, USA


36. Park City, UT, USA


37. Cody, WY, USA


38. Grand Teton National Park, WY, USA


39. Moose, WY, USA


40. Moran, WY, USA


41. Teton Village, WY, USA


42. Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

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For Troutbirder

Thanks for your nice comment - wish I could say that's my video, but it's linked to someone else's post on YouTube.
This photo of Lamar ("Lamar with Bison Dots") is mine, however. Enjoy!

HAHAHA

Now this (the drive from Gardiner, MT, to West Yellowstone, MT, via Yellowstone National Park) put me in a better mood!

Just in case ya'll care

There are lots of things that really irritate me in this world, such as: finding the perfect lipstick (or nail polish) and having it disappear from every store three days before it runs out and I want a new one; the rarest of rare, the perfect brassiere that evaporates from the face of every retail outlet on the earth when it's time to buy its replacement. I travel a lot, and have been expecting my oh-so-useful toiletries bag to expire at any moment it's so old. Do you think they make them that way any more? It's perfect - perfect size, perfect shape, it holds all the essential junk within zippered, leak-resistant compartments, lays out flat so it always fits in an overfull suitcase, and it's not even ugly (maybe just a little ratty from years of use). But no, "they" had to 100% re-engineer this perfect, classic, functional design into myriad far less functional forms. Why??
And speaking of "they," why on earth can't they make cotton pants that don't bag out after an hour or two of wear? The elastic content that's in everything makes it worse. My jeans and khakis fit so comfortably and flatteringly fresh out of the dryer, but even the high end ones could fit two of me by the end of the day. And at my size, that's really saying something.
Other things very, very low on my approval list: people whose outgoing voice or e-mail messages tell me they'll get back to me at their earliest convenience. Wow, goodness, I'd sure hate to inconvenience them! (The polite outgoing form, obviously, is to commit to respond at their earliest opportunity.) The nearly ubiquitous misuse of the word simplistic drives me insane as well. Here's another one: the use of frigging (as an adjective) in "polite" company, as a supposedly milder version of fucking. Doesn't anyone know what frigging means??
Do I sound the least bit crabby today?

From the Polysyllaby Department

The following entry is from pages 251-252 of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H.W. Fowler, revised and edited by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1965:

"hugeous. Those who use the form perhaps do so chiefly under the impression that they are satirizing the ignorant with a non-existent word, as others of their kind do with mischevious or underconstumble or high-strikes for mischievous, understand, and hysterics. It is in fact a good old word, and corresponds rather to vasty and stilly by the side of vast and still; but it is practically obsolete, and, as its correctness robs it of its facetious capabilities, it might be allowed to rest in peace."

Thanks, I think I'll just stick with ginormous for now.

Who knew ID would be so hard?

I took this early-morning, clear-day photo of a red squirrel chowing down on bright red catkins on the shore of Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park. I decided it would behoove me to identify the particular tree that produces these striking deep red flowers, and have had the darnedest time doing it. I've even asked one of the Park's naturalists; she and her colleague think it may be a thin leafed alder. Another Park staffer thinks it is a cottonwood (type unknown). It does appear on Googling "red catkin" images that it is a member of the Populus family (laurels, cottonwoods, poplars, and aspens) but I can't nail it for certain and I guess no one else can absent a good view of the trunk/bark and leaves. If you know, please tell me!

The funny thing about getting old...er

I have been with my beloved partner, KLK, for 23 years. KLK is eight years younger than I, and should be commensurately far behind me in the deterioration process we all more or less experience as we hit the start of our second half century.

Since he thought himself a 97-pound weakling in high school, and desired to emulate (or compete with, or prove himself to) his well-built, masculine father, he has exercised religiously since then. His routine throughout his adult life included running for his aerobic workout, and lifting free weights for strength and bulk. I always found his lean physique, gently curved and firm belly, and large upper arms to be endearingly attractive. But I never realized how I have taken his strength for granted. Yes, I surely did assume he would be there at the far end of whatever heavy object needed to be moved, held, or hefted, in spite of increasingly frequent visits to the orthopedist for assurance that this, that, or the other joint or muscle pain was not serious.

Recently (very recently), he celebrated his 50th birthday. Three weeks later, he completely detached one of two bicep tendons in his left arm. He'd been installing a window air conditioner in his grandma's window, but the snap suddenly came when he had nothing in his hands. He's had considerable pain, which he recognized from the moment it happened as serious, since. His doctor says the MRI he had a month ago for shoulder pain shows a partial rotator cuff tear, and the bicep destruction needs no high-tech diagnostics, as it is evident just looking at his arm when he bends his elbow where the muscle has rolled back on itself, leaving a cave in his upper arm where it used to be stretched taut by the tendon attached at the other end to his shoulder. The treatment is rest (he's not terribly good at that), gentle physical therapy, which he will do, and time. The best outcome would be complete resolution of the pain. He will never have that strength of youth again, though, and he cannot, at least in the foreseeable future, be the guy I call when our granite-topped (yes!) dining table needs moving.

In some ways, this has been more of a reality check for me even than comparing photos of my face from 30, 20,10 years ago with what I look like today in the mirror. It's true what they say, even as one pushes 60 there's no inner feeling of difference, though it's also true that memory and other weird things start to slip (I sometimes experience aphasia and entirely the wrong word - spoken, written, or typed - comes out; probably an early indicator of eventual dementia, but I'm not quite there yet).

Denial is a good thing, but it only gets you so far.

Grizzly in motion

This little video of the bear below was shot by KLK:
If you like it, it's worth watching in "high quality" mode at YouTube!

Missive from Yellowstone

For now, this trip report will have to be in the form of a photo only (I'm a little busy catching up back here in Chicago!)

This is a large, wild grizzly bear, probably a boar (male). Enjoy!

Be Here Now

The webcam is pointed into the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park; this morning steam is rising from Old Faithful, Giantess, Beehive, Lion, and Giant, among several other thermal features visible in this capture. I really can't complain, I will be in the park by Friday this week. It's been a long and exceptionally wet winter, things are just beginning to green up, and the wildlife, especially the top-of-the-food-chain predators, has been abundantly visible. I can't wait to get home!

A bit from my bio

At the request of a cousin, some months ago I started writing my autobiography. It's been a tremendously interesting exercise, though it is going slowly. But I think it might be fun to post sections of it here. The following is from my very early years:
In 1954, my parents took me on the first of several summer retreats to Martha’s Vineyard, when it was as yet undiscovered by many but well-to-do black Americans. As an interesting side note, I was entirely oblivious to that historic fact, in spite of several return visits as an adult, until only perhaps 10 years ago. A neighbor and friend, a distinguished executive of African-American heritage herself, happened to mention her acquaintances who had a home there. She expanded a bit, and eventually I understood that black doctors, lawyers, educators, and businessmen have been the builders and occupants of many of the stately homes on that attractive dot in the ocean off Cape Cod over the last hundred years. The TV movie, The Wedding, with Halle Berry, is set there, more or less contemporaneous with my family’s visits. Happily, children, (and, apparently, some adults), are color-blind.
We went again in 1955, 1956, and in 1959. It was during those halcyon summers that I discovered Nature. We rented a little cinder-block “cottage” owned by a man named Sisson. It sat among a couple of others at the end of Shirley Road (this latter information is thanks to Google Maps, 2008; it was gravel and very sparsely inhabited in those days, and it would not be surprising if it had not yet been named then) in poison-ivy-filled woodlands adjacent to the Lagoon. On the shore of the Lagoon was (and still is) the State Lobster Hatchery, freely open to our explorations. It delighted me to see the Brownian flagellations of millions of hatchlings in small, smelly concrete tanks with their churning bubblers. Also for my viewing pleasure were a couple of adult specimens of gargantuan size or with especially bizarre claw deformities.
The Lagoon was Nature-made, resplendent with sea life. Every day we found washed up on the little beach live horseshoe crabs and dried compartmentalized strings of conch egg cases, with a thousand fully formed miniature shells inside. In the water itself, and in the brackish wetlands behind the Lagoon, were healthy scallops with neon-blue eye-dots and blue crabs that blithely came to eat the chicken legs my father tossed into the water on strings, only to be scooped up in his net and boiled for dinner by my mother. Elsewhere on the island were tiny wild blueberries, and on the unprotected Atlantic side, below the spectacular cliffs of Gay Head, dangerous Portuguese-Man-O-War jellies washed up on the beach, tempting curious little girls to touch, or at least to throw rocks at them. In 1954, hurricane Carol made her way up the coast and, besides terrifying my mother (whose experience with hurricanes in Puerto Rico informed her fears) lifted the pleasure boats and those of lobstermen alike onto the sidewalks and the docks, and caused much other memorable havoc.
Unfortunately, whether because of the interference of man, or because of Nature’s whims, the last time I saw the Lagoon it had changed extremely and was no longer the fruitful cradle of the 1950s. The outlet under the bridge was silted up, thus the source of fresh seawater and nutrients was choked off.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to Eleanor Lawton-Sebeok, March 10, 1912-January 24, 2005. I'm thinking of you, as I often do.

And I quote...

A student who works for us brought me a little souvenir mother-of-pearl bookmark from his home country of Korea. It's quite sweet, very pretty, and comes with the following helpful description on the back of the package:

The product which it sees bites Korean tradition and ocean it is beautiful the color which the materials is brilliant with the product which it manufactures with mother-of-pearl lacquerware technique the nature which will wind to express like that

I have to say, the spelling is impressive, it's just the punctuation that seems to be lacking.