Obama

This is the last part of an essay by Anna Quindlen over at Newsweek. I cannot say it better myself, and so I won't.

There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.

Now a black man will be called Mr. President.

They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.

But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.

Let the change begin.

A painless voting experience

How about that? I was fully prepared with not one, but two knitting projects in case I waited for so long that I got bored with just the first one. Also, I dropped Mr W off at the before-school care, and Sally off at dog school, anticipating having to max out their days so I could spend time waiting in line to vote today.

I never even pulled out my knitting. I drove over to the Hilton, which I chose because it has a Starbucks, and walked right in. Someone who really had it goin’ on created Voting Centers in my county a few years ago, so I could choose one of about 30 places to cast my vote. I had my voter card that I had gotten in the mail and my ID, which the nice poll workers checked and I didn’t really even have to slow down as they checked my info, gave me my ballot and directed me to a spot to begin.

I chose a paper ballot, although I could have done it electronically. I think the paper is less goof-proof. There were a ton of state constitutional amendments this year and it took a while to read each one. I withheld a vote on whether the cities that allow gambling should be allowed to offer Craps and Roulette – I really don’t care.

So here I am, back at work, and I am so impressed with how my county made it easy and painless to cast my vote today. Go Obama!!!!!

The Fabulous Mr W

It's been a really busy week. On Halloween, Mr W went to a birthday party at our local roller rink. It's been about 25 years since I had set foot into one of those places, and not much has changed. Heck, they even had Michael Jackson playing when we walked in. Mr W doesn't skate much; this was probably his third or fourth time.

We see some of his pals, get his skates, and get them on his feet. I help him up, he wobbles over to the rink, and just goes right out there. And falls. And gets up, goes about 20 feet, and falls. This process repeats all the way around the rink. I'm wondering if I should have bought him inline skates a long time ago.

The thing is, though, I very much admire how he got out there and just did it. He tried, even though he knew he wasn't very good at it, and knew he was going to fall a lot. I don't know if it's because he's just sort of gotten this way after two summers of day camp where they do lots of these kinds of trips (bowling, mini golf, etc.) or if he's just that way, but I'm impressed with his willingness to try this stuff.

Afterwards, I asked how the party was. He said it was good, but also said something like, "I spend a lot of time falling down and getting back up again." As if this were a description of the event, not a judgement of his abilities. I liked that. And will keep an eye out for sales on inline skates.

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Odds and ends

Xmas travel plans:
Tickets are bought and I'm excited about Mr W's and my upcoming trip. I guess because it's getting late in the ticket-buying season, there weren't any flights home on the day I wanted, but we're coming home the day after that. I didn't want to wear out our welcome, but at the same time the tickies are expensive and I'd like to get my money's worth. As long as everyone's happy with hand-knit gifts, we're good. Anybody have a knitted Lego set pattern?

Trip to AZ:
Home again today. The visits with CB go so fast. I have gotten into a rhythm where I work most of the weekends when I don't have Mr W, and then take a long weekend off to either go there (most of the time) or have him come here. I do have vacation time, but not that much, hence working weekends. He's pretty swell indeed.

This new obsession with Knitting:
I'm almost done with one of the purple socks shown a couple of posts below. I've gotten a lot of satisfaction from the craft lately and have spent a lot of time on Ravelry, an online community of yarn people. It's been useful to see what certain yarns look like when they are knitted. This is good because some stuff that looks cool when it's on the shelf can be horrendous when knit up.

A reason to be annoyed with myself:
This Friday, Halloween is a school-out day for Mr W. I blew it by not calling to get him into the all-day day care and now they are full. Sh*t!!! I'm hoping his grandma can watch him for half the day, and then his dad and I can split the rest. I was good, even called too early about the last one, but forgot about this one.

Doctor visit:
I have a new doctor. No, nothing's wrong, but I saw an advertisement for this new doctor who is an internist that specializes in women's health and cancer screening. Sounds good to me. I have a doctor, but could take him or leave him, and he doesn't have these specialties. Having lost two family members to cancer that went undetected until it was ready to kill them, I want to be proactive.

The cost of a good time

I'm close to buying airline tickets for me and Mr W to fly to South Carolina after Christmas. It's been a weird year. Well, it's been a year of some losses. My sister died in February at age 45 of colon cancer. My one sister-in-law's grandfather passed and the other's father passed. Yikes.

My sister would usually host Christmas and we were always invited to go to Ohio for a few days. We get along well, so it was a treat to see everyone. The first night we were all together was always special, and we'd stay up entirely too late talking, laughing, eating and drinking.

I can't seem to make myself go to Ohio this year. I'm fairly certain that my brother in law will work as much as he can, and my younger brother will visit for a few days. I feel like a heel that I don't want to go, but I imagine they'll have the house exactly as Kris made it every Christmas, and I can't bear to see that without her there.

So Mr W will spend Christmas proper with his grandma and my x, and he and I will fly out a few days later. I know everyone who is traveling over the holidays gets socked by high airfares, but geez. I'm in for almost $900 just to get us there and back. Add on presents, food and entertainment... I'm thankful I don't have to shell out for a car or a hotel (thanks R and L!).

And for whatever reason, there does not exist a direct flight from where I live. I already know it will be worth any inconvenience, though. Mr W is a trooper of a traveler, and given a laptop and some snacks he can survive almost any airport delay.

Seeing my family reenergizes me, and I wish that Mr W could see them more often. We'll make the most of this time and hopefully have a chance to honor those who have died and celebrate what we have.

Consumed by the craft

Have you ever been so excited to work on some project that you get up early and stay up late for it? I started knitting a pair of socks a few days ago and they have consumed me. I was weird, it took me a long time to decide on a pattern; I had bought the yarn a few weeks ago. I guess I was hung up on having to knit it on the tiny (2.5 mm) needles or taking on something that was too difficult.

But I chose wisely, I guess, because, while I'm following a pattern, it was easy to memorize and also (more importantly) easy to know where I am in the pattern by looking at the work. The pattern is called "Spring Forward." I'm really enjoying the process on this, it's fun to see the pattern unfold.

I'll be going to AZ to visit CB at the end of the week, and I'm looking forward (in a way) to having a situation where I have to sit somewhere and wait, like being at an airport. It gives me a chance to work on my stuff. I suppose that could be a sign of this being an obsession? Oh well.

I do knit, really

I joined a Christmas Swap this year. Friend la Guera told me about it, and there are about 30 people from around the world (isn't that cool?) who are participating. Each person sends needles, pattern and yarn for a Christmas-themed item, something warm to drink, some candy and a story from their country.

I have been matched with Ida, from Norway. She is an accomplished knitter, as I've seen from her site. I realized, though, that she hasn't seen much of my stuff, so I figured I'd post a few pictures. I don't want to end up with something too difficult for me to knit, but on the other hand, everything that's been a challenge so far I have eventually figured out.

Time on my hands

Something happened yesterday that hasn't happened for a long time. I was 10 minutes early to pick up Mr W. I signed him up for a pottery class and had to get him right when school let out. It is madness and despair to try to find a parking spot near the school at closin' time, so I tried to get there a little early.

Usually he's at the after-school care, so I can get him anytime within a 30 minute window (that I've made for myself) when I get off work. There have been times when I have been a few minutes late for other pick-up events - really, not more than 5, and he is stricken by anxiety. We want to avoid that.

In the perfect world, I waltz in with three minutes to spare. Yesterday, I got there and wished I had a book, my knitting, whatever, but I didn't, so I sat on a bench on the playground and looked around. It was a beautiful autumn day, and I just sort of went through my to-do list and enjoyed the sun.

School let out, we got to pottery with time to spare and he had a good time.

We got his school pictures back yesterday. Of course to me he looks the same every day, but getting the school picture shows how much he's changed in a year. Sure enough, the shape of his face changed a bit, and for some reason, his hair is turning redder. I think this comes from my side; my mom had reddish hair. Seeing him reminds me of her, and that makes me smile.

This in from my Dad

My dad is great. In fact, as I get older and spend more time as a parent, I get just an inkling of what it must have been like for them to have three children three years apart. He and my mom put a high value on education, and all four of us got four year degrees. I think that one of the unintended consequences of all my education is a high degree of skepticism, which I see as a good thing.

Dad is kind of old school. I'm fairly certain he'll vote for McCain, and is pretty conservative, although I've noticed as he gets older he's able to see more commonalities among people than he used to.

So he sends me an email today, and this is what I see first:

Subject: Women's ass size study

And I think, oh dear, here's another forwarded piece of junk mail that I'll be slightly offended by and then immediately delete.

I read on:

There is a new study about women and how they feel about their asses, the results were pretty interesting:
30% of women think their ass is too fat
10% of women think their ass is too skinny......
The remaining 60% say they don't care, they love him, he's a good man, and they wouldn't trade him for the world.

And I laughed out loud at my desk, almost shooting my Crystal Light out of my nose.

Guilty of a Cliché

Mr W is supposed to read for 10 minutes a day. As his teacher predicted at the parent-teacher conference at the beginning of the year, he'd rather read to himself, as that is getting easier to do than read aloud. But of course the way they test the kids is to have them read aloud, so they need to be good at it, or at least have it reflect what they can do.

We go to our local library about once a week for books and videos. I pick out several books for him to read at home, as well as books we can read for bedtime stories. The last time I got books for him to read, I was excited because I could tell they were a step up from what he was reading over the summer and in first grade.

Fast forward to the first time I say, "OK, pick a book and let's have you read for 10." To my surprise, he looks at all the books and pronounces them "boring." "What?" I say. "You didn't even look at them closely. You know what you just did? You judged these books by their covers." He was unimpressed, so I asked him to read the one on submarines.

So I've been picking the book for him to read. I picked one out on prairie dogs, as we see them in their last vestiges on the edge of town as we take Sally to dog school. He gave me the usual "it's boring, it's too long" stuff and got to work. Lo and behold, he gets through two chapters and says, "we can read more of this next time, right?" Yes indeedy, my budding book lover.

Juxtaposition

Sally goes to dog school. Sally will be two in December, and as such still has a lot of puppy energy that needs to be burned off. When I got her, one of the benefits was to be that I would get some exercise while she got exercise. And that largely is the case. There is a small group of us who walk while at the dog park, mostly because our dogs would just lay there if we weren't moving.

But a couple of times a week I take her to dog school. No, they don't actually teach them anything unless I want to pay extra, but they do reinforce good manners and let the dogs play all day. Sal comes home exhausted, and I can focus on Mr W or not feel guilty about going out that night.

Dog school is located in an industrial park-type area, and it happens to be across the street from our local food bank. A couple of times a week, if I get Sal to dog school before 9:00 am, there are people lined up outside the food bank, each with a shopping cart that the food bank provides. Lately there have been 15-20 people in line.

I am conflicted about this. Here I am, doing something that is, by any definition, a luxury, a perk, a convenience. These people actually need food, or they wouldn't be standing in line. The simple solution is for me to donate to the food bank, and I sometimes do. But not enough to assuage my guilt over not doing more to help.

By all accounts things will get worse before they get better. I am going to make a bigger effort to do things that help with the basics, and that means donating food or money to the food bank, and also to things that provide coats or toys for kids. I still have a job and am able to pay my bills, and I think that obligates me to give something to those that don't and can't.

Halloween's coming, you know

This caught my eye the other day. What a clever idea!! Thanks, Knitty.

I'm good at mosquito husbandry

Back in February of this year, a colleague and I went on a collecting trip to get specimens from a certain populations of mosquitoes. We brought back live mosquitoes and set them up in our insectary, which as rooms with growth chambers in it. The mosquitoes hang out in metal-frame cages with sugar water. One kind is special because the females will lay eggs without a bloodmeal (they are autogenous), while the other kind's female get blood fed every week to maintain the colony. No, we don't use human volunteers, we use a system that has little membrane-covered cups of calf's blood that are electronically heated.

The point of maintaining the colonies is to have live specimens that we can test new DNA markers with. The autogenous colony is interesting because there isn't a good genetic way to tell them apart from the anautogenous, and they are identical in appearance.

It has fallen to me to do the grunt work to maintain these colonies. It is never hard or messy, but it has to be done every day unless I work ahead so they'll make it over the weekend with enough food. The females lay eggs in a cup of water, and I take the cup out and distribute the egg rafts into 9 x 13 aluminum cake pans with lids. I feed them the fine particles of a solution of water, fish food, liver powder and something called "brain-heart infusion" (I don't want to know any more about that either).

After 5 or 6 days, the eggs have gone from larvae to pupae, and I transfer the water and bugs to a rearing chamber and put it back into the cage. I remove the old rearing chambers, feed everyone so they'll lay eggs and repeat and repeat and repeat.

It takes me about 45 minutes a day to do this, and as I said before, it's not especially dirty, or is it ever difficult. Someone else does the weekly blood feed, so that saves me a little time. My boss hasn't check on how these colonies are doing for months.

Yet, I take some pride in the fact that when I come in in the morning, there are egg rafts to process and I see that as a reflection that I'm doing a good job taking care of these creatures. Yes, I smush the ones that get out, and don't really have any affection for them at all. But I want to do a good job of it if I have to do it.

That said, I realize that I do have a lot of latitude in how I spend my time at work and I am thankful for that. I can work my hours when I want to work them, as long as the work gets done. My boss doesn't peer over my shoulder, but at the same time, I'd better be ready to give an update or know where those specimens are (and I usually do). If taking care of several hundred mosquitoes is the price to pay for those job perks, then I'm glad to do it.

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Gobama

I've been pretty good about watching the debates this year. I usually avoid them because the verbal attacks, even if I don't care for one or both participants, make me uncomfortable. This year it's too important to miss, so I've watched.

I had to divide my attention last night between Mr W and the debate, so I only got to really watch about a third of it. I kept the TV on otherwise and while I was reading bedtime stories, I kept pausing, prompting Mr W to say, "come on, read please."

Analyses afterwards and this morning seem to indicate that Obama came out a bit ahead, and McCain didn't change too many minds. He apparently sounded more like a typical politician.

Although things can change rapidly, I'm pondering this morning what it feels like to be an Obama supporter when it looks like he might win. I'm thrilled he's made it this far in the contest. I like how he conducts himself, even though his campaign has, like McCain's, aired negative and misleading attack ads.

Only 4 more weeks.

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The ever-growing Mr W

Well, it finally happened. I was putting laundry into the washing machine and came across a pair of gray pants. 'Oh, I don't remember wearing those' I thought. Then I realized they were Mr W's pants. Yes, he's gotten big enough that I mistook a pair of his pants for a pair of mine.

Last May, at the end of the school year, I laid in a supply of long pants from the consignment store that I was certain would fit him when the start of second grade rolled around. Lo and behold, I have 6 pairs of pants that he never wore and are now too short.

He's a tall kid already, one of the tallest in his class. I'm thankful that he won't be picked on because of his size (one less thing to worry about). I did tell him, though, that his size then more or less obligates him to speak up for the kids in his class that come up to his shoulder. I don't think he gets it yet, but one of these days I imagine he'll get the opportunity to stand with some kid who is being bullied and hopefully be of some help.

We went back to the consignment store last weekend and bought some more long pants and hopefully he'll be set for a while.

New Items from Postsecret

Ha! Here are a couple of Sunday secrets from Postsecret.

In other news

Last night I met with friend la Guera for dinner last night, before she and another teacher went off to chaperon the Homecoming dance. We talked about our past experiences, the racy dresses the girls wore, and how the duties of a chaperon include approaching couples who look like they are having sex and telling them they need to cool it.

I walked around to see the props and scenery (the theme was "Neverland") before they let the kids in, and thought about my days at school dances. I went to an all-girls school (which probably explains a lot...) and getting dates for dances was always a challenge. As I think about it, there didn't seem to be an option for a person to attend with a group of friends or without a date. This seems grossly unfair as I look back, although I don't think the nuns intentionally meant to force us into the mindset that we had to attend social functions with a date.

So as I walked around (it's been some time since I've been in a high school anyway), and saw the advertisements for class rings and senior pictures, I felt a significant sense of..... relief. Relief that I'm well past the uncertainty and insecurity that were a big part of my social interactions in high school. I commented at dinner, 'if I knew then what I know now', and well, I'd have had a lot more fun. And I'm glad I'm here not there.

Hey Baby! Go Away! Look at Me! Cuttlefish Communication

I've mentioned before my long time interest in giant squid. I am amazed that something so big can remain largely a scientific mystery.

Cuttlefish, which are smaller relatives, have an incredible capacity to change the appearance of their skin in order to communicate with their squidly counterparts. Ed, over at the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science (a good all around science blog, btw) has a great post on the subject and here's a quote about how it works:

The top layer consists of specialised sacs of coloured pigment called chromatophores, which can expand or contract on command. By switching them from concentrated specks to flat plates, the squid can produce rapid bursts of colour.

But the key to secret signalling lies in the bottom layer. This consist of cells called iridophores, which contain stacked plates of protein separated by liquid. When light hits each plate, some is reflected but the rest passes through to the other plates below. The squid can control the size of the gap between the plates, so that they match the wavelength of different colours of light.

Go read the rest of the post, it's very interesting.

Seeing it reminded me of when I worked a couple of summers as a seasonal naturalist for the state park system in Ohio. At the training, we'd go through this catalog of films (yes, like we saw in grade school) on various topics that we were supposed to show at the campfire program on Saturday night. I tried to pick things that were either just entertainment ("What's that Lassie? Timmy's down in the well?") or sciencey.

One was on cuttlefish, and it was one of those things that you think, 'well, that looks OK' and after you see it, you think 'I can't believe there are creatures like that!' As they say in the video below, from a PBS NOVA episode, it's pretty wild that something related to a slug has such a complex brain. Did you notice how big their eyes are when they're not trying to hide them? Wow.

The NOVA link is to their website that has a lot more info on this phenomenon.

Independent of the original connection

I was emailing back and forth today with the x about Mr W's schedule and he mentioned that his mother is in the hospital. When I was married, I was very close to my mother-in-law. As MIL's go, she was tops. Very hands-off, but at the same time very supportive. She had polio when she was 16, so she spent most of her adult life getting around on crutches, and has gradually lost mobility over the years. She's in a power wheelchair, and this latest hospital stay involves her shoulder. If she can't get it back to the point where it will support her when she transfers in and out of the chair, she'll have to move from her independent living facility to a nursing home that can provide more care. A rather large concession.

After I was divorced, I didn't contact her much, and she, I guess, felt like the first move should be mine, so I've not really interacted much with her for the last few years. She's in town, and I'm happy that Mr W gets to see her on a regular basis. I of course have thought, "oh, I should call her and stop by" but I never seem to get there.

I don't have any reason anymore, if I ever did. It felt awkward, when I was first single, to think about including her in my life. But now, I can more easily remember that she and I have a relationship that stands on its own. I feel weird for waiting so long, but it's time.

So I think I'll stop by the hospital and see her tomorrow. There are still some nice flowers in my garden and I think she'd appreciate a little bouquet.

Am I boring?

Got a chance to talk with CB this morning. I set my alarm for 5:15 am and it was 9:15 pm in Sydney. We talked for about an hour and I feel like we got caught up with what was going on with each other.

After I got off the phone, though, I thought about the things that had been going on over the last few days. You know, the stuff you talk about with someone who wants to know what you've been up to, and it went something like: hanging out with Mr W, doing housework, doing garden stuff, knitting, oh, a friend stopped over on Saturday, um, I think I'm going to have to go back to the dentist, um... umm... I'm still sore about having my manuscript returned... and that's about it.

I thought, 'god, I'm so boring'. Things seem exaggeratedly routine (if there is such a thing) when the other person is traveling on the other side of the world. And I've been on this knitting kick; I really like to sit down in the evening after the kid goes to bed and work on my stuff. I'm getting better at it and I enjoy it a lot. I'd post a picture of the socks I'm working on, but they're for CB and I don't want to ruin the surprise...

I don't know, it was this weird juxtaposition of doing things like gardening and knitting that I really do enjoy and actually don't think are boring, and having to talk about them, which made them sound boring.

I know I'm not really boring (I hope!), it was just a strange feeling.

In other news,
My boss gave a talk today that included the project I recently completed, as well as my coworker's ongoing work. There were four talks in the session, he was the first, and they asked people to hold questions until the end.

At the end, our director asked a good question about my stuff, and then someone else asked another question and both questions addressed areas of research I've told my boss that I want to pursue as a result of the work I did. He said we were working on those things and would eventually publish what we found out. Yea!

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Aaaaahhhh Saturday

I have a long list of things I'd like to get done today. The weather is going to be nice, so my plan is to:

1. Organize my garage - there's one narrow path through the clutter and it's annoying me

2. Cut the grass - *rolls eyes* I dislike this job, but it needs to be done

3. Rearrange the painted rocks - picture of whimsical and clever yard art forthcoming

4. Begin Fall cleanup of garden - it's time to prune the 10' rose bush - yikes!!

5. Clean out my car - will assign window cleaning to Mr W, who is angling for an extra $5 to tack on to his allowance money to buy another Lego toy. I hope to get some work out of him...

I guess that's it. It's a beautiful day in CO today, and I'm glad to be here to enjoy it.

In other news,

CB is in Australia for the next three weeks, leading a bird watching tour across half of the country. The time change presents a challenge for communicating. It's 8 hours earlier, on the next day over there. So I can get up at 5 am and talk to him before he goes to bed, or he can call me at work when he gets up in the morning.

We've done a lot of chatting on Skype, which lets you call a place through your computer for very cheap rates. If he's got a good connection then we'll video chat, but if not, then I can call his hotel with my computer (yes, the technology was news to me too) and talk to him that way.

The tour has a pelagic (ocean bird) trip before the rest of the tour starts, and he reported that he got a good look at one of these, a Blue Shark:

Yardwork image

Shark image

Remind me, next year about this time

I'm very happy with how my garden turned out this year. It was the first year I had everything planted for my side garden, which runs along an alley. I also have a side yard on the other side of the house, but hardly ever go there except to cut the grass. It gets too hot out there in the summer, and there's no shade.

I plan to remedy that sometime this winter by having my neighbor, who has a remodeling company, take out the windows of my front porch area, which was enclosed years ago. It's a house and neighborhood that are very amenable to front porches, and it will give me a place to be outside (and still have my internet connection :-)

Like I said, I like how my garden turned out this year, and will post some pictures soon. I'm especially happy with my well-behaved pumpkins, which stayed more or less confined to the area I gave them, as opposed to making a run across the alley.

But I always, at least since I've owned houses and gardened, feel a tad bit of remorse at this time of year that I did not plant flowers that have their peak flowering at the beginning of fall. I vow to remember to do it the next year, and am swept away at the nursery by the things that are flowering right then.

Sure enough, we were walking around the neighborhood and I saw the two things I wish were in my garden right now:

Japanese Anemone (Anemone sp.), part of the Buttercup family.

image anemone

And the other are New England Asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) of the Aster family. They are beautiful and a really vibrant shade of purple.

I'm going to go to a couple of nurseries around town this weekend and see if they have either of these. I might get lucky. If not, remind me next spring!!

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Update:

I was able to find an Anemone at the garden center! I'm excited. They are supposed to like afternoon shade, so I tucked it in a corner and we'll see. It's very pretty!

Remembering

I received an invitation to the dedication of the Continuing Care Nursery (not the NICU as I had originally heard) for my sister. I'm trying to think of a way to say this without being too melodramatic. Today marks 15 years since my mom died, again of cancer.

I think about what she would think of 'how I turned out' and I think she'd be proud. There are times when I could use her guidance, and it makes me feel that much worse that my sister's kids have to continue without their mom. It's not fair.

And I'm a little scared that if I'm not vigilant, I'll get sick and have to say goodbye to the people I love too. But this is more about missing Kris and Mom. So I will take a few minutes today and remember what these extraordinary women meant to me.

If you can read this, thank your immune system...

I had coffee yesterday with my coworker who had a kidney transplant. She looks amazing!!! Unbelievable that it's only been 5 weeks. Her impressive bounce back to wellness is largely due to her age (just 29). The match (from her brother) was so good, that if she takes care of it, she'll be able to get 25-30 years out of that kidney.

I got a brief lesson on how transplant patients' immune systems are tweaked to not reject their new organ. At this early stage, the doctors have her on anti's: anti-biotics, anti-fungals, anti-virals, to protect her while they are depressing her immune system with anti-rejection drugs. Then, once she's passed the magic 6 month mark, they'll be less concerned with rejection, and begin to tweak the mix of medications so that she has as much immune system as possible, yet won't reject the kidney.

And they have options, too. Apparently there are different meds that do the same thing and if a person gets side effects, there is often something else to try.

I was very impressed how it was obvious that transplants today have built on what's been done in the past. I know, I know, duh, but for example, they don't put the kidney where her old one was. Actually, where it is. They left it in. The new kidney is put a little to the side, and the surgeon goes in through the front.

I'm so happy she's OK. Unfortunately, her immunocompromised state makes it too risky for her to do lab work, so she'll do deskwork when she comes back. After that, she'll have to switch disciplines so she doesn't work with anything infectious to humans. Something like plant pathology. It's an awful bit of irony that we work at a facility that specifically studies infectious disease.

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From today's PostSecret

PostSecret

I'm done (I swear)

This is the yarn (yeah, the Bionicle is for scale :-)) I've purchased over the last month or so. In the three years or so since I've knitted things other than scarves, it has been a strictly seasonal venture. I love to knit from late August until about May. That's when the warm weather makes the prospect of a big wool thing on my lap unappealing.

My local yarn store had a sale after labor day, and I bought some yarn. I learned a good lesson too - I should get the pattern first, then get the yarn to suit the pattern. I like all the stuff I've bought, but there are a couple of things that I'll have to hunt around for a suitable pattern for. That's OK, it's good to have a stash.

I've had a thing for socks lately. I made a pair for CB for Christmas last year where I actually made three and gave him the best two. I just finished a pair for me (below) and have started another pair for CB. I like the portable nature of socks, and the ones with simple patterns (but it needs to have a pattern!) are the best right now.

So of course after I bought the first round, I was looking around Ravelry and found patterns that I really liked and wanted to try. Back to the yarn store, where I purchased the rest. I'm pretty sure I'm done buying yarn (and needles) for the season. The project list is loooonnngg. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to work on the socks for a while.

The Sister Kris Memorial NICU

I got an email from my dad the other day, saying that the hospital where my sister used to work is going to dedicate the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit - where she worked) to her. I don't have the details yet, but I think it's such a great thing.

It's a reflection of her coworkers, too. She had nothing to do with this gesture. What I mean is that it's the awesome (and I don't mean that glibly) people that she worked with that made this happen. I wish I could be there.

She took a lot of pride in her work, and even though she didn't have an official title beyond being a floor nurse, when she worked, everyone went to her for answers. She filled up the supplies and kept the less engaged nurses on their toes.

It's an appropriate way to honor her.

Am I drooling?

I just got back from the dentist. I hadn't been there for over a year, and was pleasantly surprised this past Tuesday to hear that I didn't have any cavities. However, I had two fillings that needed to be replaced, and we scheduled the appointment for today.

I have a long history with nerve-wracking dentist visits. Family lore has it that when I was around 6, I asked Dr. Rossi if he would shut the door so my mom in the waiting room wouldn't hear me cry. He was sort of the "let's see if we can do this without Novocaine", but not always; I remember that I got poked plenty.

It seemed like I usually had cavities when I'd go to the dentist, but I suppose I have fewer teeth than there were visits, so that can't be true. When I was a freshman in college, I was persuaded to be the state boards patient of someone working in Dr. Rossi's office. I agreed because I would get several fillings done for free, and she was a good dentist.

After that, the anxiety sort of snowballed. I remember one visit where I actually (and involuntarily) kicked the dentist's elbow because he hit a nerve while drilling. Then the nice dentist at the health center at school introduced me to the benefits of gas and Valium.

I have to get a ride home, but that combination works really well. I still get a little nervous, but by and large I'm just there. I'm able to be still, think about other things and get through it.

On the up side, my teeth are straight and I don't have any signs of gum disease. And hopefully future trips to the dentist will entail only the replacement of work already done, like the fillings I had replaced today. And one more up shot - one is a white filling - it's like I got a new tooth!

Parts

I'm a fan of the blog bioephemera, where Jessica brings together biology and art in lots of interesting ways that enhance the enjoyment of both disciplines. I've been digging around for new patterns to try and am part of a group of 'scientific knitters' on Ravelry, an online knitting community. DNA makes for a good pattern in a scarf or sweater.

Someone was looking for a pattern for knitting a brain. Yup, a brain. And perhaps more surprisingly, there were people offering options. One of them pointed to Sarah Illenberger, who knitted these wonderful organs.

How's that for the intersection of art and science?

Harmonic convergence?

No, not really, but every once in a great while, I get to sleep in. It's almost always my own doing that I don't sleep in on the weekends - there's so much to do, funwise and domestic duty-wise. The other times, Mr W's up so he can get a jump on his weekend. Funny how the prospect of a weekend makes a kid eager to be up at 6:30 am. We have worked out a deal where he's supposed to wait until 7 to see if I'm up and that works pretty well.

I've had a cold the last couple of days. It started as a sort throat when CB was here, and I thought it was because I wasn't drinking enough water, which happens sometimes - CO is a dry place. Yikes, the day after he left, I got a full-blown head cold.

So last night, as I was getting Mr W to bed, I said my usual, "don't bug me before 7 am", jokingly, of course. Wow, lo and behold, I wake up at 8:45, and it's quiet. Because I'm a mom, my first thought was, "I hope he's OK", and the dog was quiet in her crate. This just doesn't happen in my house, so I was pleased indeed.

There is no stealth in my house. The wooden floors make our comings and goings pretty obvious. So as I was turning the coffee pot on, he stirred and wanted to get up. So we're all just hangin' on a Saturday morning, me at the computer, dog with a chew toy, Mr W watching a movie about the Justice League.

I haven't had a cold for a while, and two nights ago, while I was laying down reading stories to Mr W before bed, I couldn't breathe at all through my nose. Nothing. I later took some cold medicine and it was better, but at the time, I thought about how uncomfortable it is when something we take for granted is taken away. Without getting all metaphorical about it, it did make me think about people who have chronic pain or nausea or whatever.

Yup, count yer blessings.

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Isn't it cool

Back in July, there was this weird confluence of events around me getting back in touch with a friend from my high school days. The short version is, the day I found her on Facebook, she thought she saw my ex and Mr W driving in Yellowstone National Park on vacation. Quite the coincidence.

We grew up in Ohio, but she's worked around the US and overseas in the last decade or so, and is ready to settle in NY state. She's passing through CO on the way, so I'm excited to to get the chance to see her, and have her meet Mr W.

I wonder if it's because we shared some of our most formative years, but this friend is one of those people that I can pick-up-where-we-left-off with. Isn't that cool? It gives me a bit of insight as to why I am the way I am.

Hand me my umbrella, will you?

Because when it rains it pours sometimes. I feel like I've sort of dodged most of this, but my brothers' families have been taking some hits lately. I feel sad for their losses.

My dear sister in law lost her dad to cancer over the weekend. Not unexpected at all as he was at the end and everyone knew it. It was going to happen any time now, and she said he passed peacefully.


But it is still a loss.


My other dear sister in law's grandfather passed about a week ago. I still am amazed at how long her grandparents have persisted. These grandparents who lived in the same house for a very long time, a lifetime, and who just recently moved "to town" so that they could be cared for in an assisted living situation. Imagine being 6 (the age of R and L's oldest daughter) and to not only have a doting grandma, but a doting greatgrandma as well. One of life's bonuses, to be sure. And it's a similar thing - not a surprise, but yet a loss, a hole is there.

To add insult to injury, R and L had to euthanize their nice little cat yesterday. Geez. Named Muenster (like the cheese), he was the companion of the now-passed Colby (big, orange, you get the picture) and was this geeky, bad-hipped little goofball of a cat that was a lot of fun to watch because you would swear he saw things the rest of us mere mortals could not.

Life does that sometimes. We have to sift through a lot of stuff at once, and only when it's passed and we've processed can we look back and say, "wow, that was tough." It reminds me to appreciate the times when life is not like that. When the big things I've got going on are getting the place ready for a CB visit, and trying to get Mr W and I into a smooth school-year schedule. Work is good, I have a good idea for a project that I'm going to pitch to my boss after having lunch tomorrow with one of my mentors and I'm happy the warm weather is done for the year. My kid is healthy and so full of questions lately (transportation using giant magnets, etc.). Heck, I even have three nice pumpkins from the garden that will look very nice on my porch.

It's what you make it, usually.

Labor Day

I listened to someone speak today about Labor Day, and he subsequently got into the area of how it is typical for Americans to want more from their jobs than to merely provide money for food, shelter and clothing. A lot of us at least partly define ourselves by our work, and we want to be seen as doing work that has some purpose.

He mentioned how even people who do repetitive jobs tend to seek ways to improve the job they do, or some component of the process. And finally, many of us wish to grow in our jobs; we want to be doing a job where we can learn new things.

Then again, our "work" may not involve our job. I have heard of people staying in dead-end jobs because of the health care benefits, and wonder if those people have other outlets.

As for me, I like my job. I also see my work as involving things outside my job. Of course being mom to the fabulous Mr W is right up there, as well as being a good partner to CB, and being a good friend, family member, neighbor, and member of my community. I also do things for my own pleasure, like knitting, that mostly count as, I don't know, 'self therapy'?

I posted earlier that I would try to get an answer to the question "what do you do for a living?" after CB's co-workers asked me and I felt I gave them a mediocre answer.

I work in a lab whose purpose is to study the Ecology and Entomology of mosquitoes that are disease vectors. So much of what is known about mosquito taxonomy is based on morphology alone, that we do a lot of work with DNA-based molecular markers (you know, bands on a gel) to help determine species' distribution, and also information about particular species at the population level

These are different levels of organization. With the taxonomy, the species is the basic level, so we use markers that show differences among species. With the population-level stuff, we look at markers that are more variable, and thus let us characterize the amount of diversity within and between populations.

Who cares? Well, the population-level analyses let us see how two closely-related subspecies grade into one another across a hybrid zone, and also to characterize the degree of hybridization. For example, it looks like, at least in the lab, some hybrids are capable of exhibiting heterosis, where the hybrids show a more extreme version of a trait (like vector competence) than either parental species.

So my job involves both finding markers that we can use to characterize species at the level of populations, and analyzing samples of mosquito populations from wherever. Still doesn't quite roll off the tongue, though.

I use DNA markers to examine differences between species of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

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As we age...

I was at the eye doctor yesterday for an eye exam. My glasses are three years old and I now have eye insurance, so it was definitely time. They do a lot of different things, test color vision, peripheral vision, the annoying puff-of-air glaucoma test, etc. I had the option of either getting my eyes dilated for them to look at my retinas, or I could pay $20 and have them take a digital picture of it. No contest, take the picture.

My retinas are fine, thank you, and I was impressed that they could tell things like diabetes-related issues and high blood pressure from pictures of one's retinas.

Back in the room after all the tests, the doctor comes in and we're going over how my eyes have changed since the last exam. He starts out explaining how the lens of the eye gets less responsive "as we age" blah blah.

It took me a minute, but I realized that he was preparing me for needing bifocals. I stopped him and said, "I already have bifocals, so you don't have to soften the blow." He laughed, looked again and said, "oh yeah, you do" and then just said I needed a slightly stronger magnification.

That's OK, I can still get my no-line bifocals. It doesn't actually bother me, because the improvement is so noticeable. I spend enough time reading and/or in front of the computer that I need them.

What frames? It seems all but the frameless ones look weird, but CB's coming in next week and he'll help me pick out something.

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Shiny and New

Perhaps because it corresponds with the beginning of school for other folks around here, I'm feeling a bit renewed because I have a brand new lab notebook. Can you picture it? There I am, walking down the hallway, clutching my new lab notebook to my chest as I eagerly make my way to the lab.

Around here, we have nice lab notebooks, Sort of a hard-back cardboard cover, black, with the words "LABORATORY NOTEBOOK," as well as the division where I work, written on the front in silver. Said notebooks are not just laying around for the taking, oh no. They are kept by the secretary of the branch I work for, and one must ask Vickie for one. She always gives them out when asked, but this strikes me as a little odd. Sort of like making sure we don't take more than our share.

Although I don't think anyone else has ever looked at my lab notebook, I like to think I keep good enough notes so that if someone had to replicate what I do (yes, I'm working on that post) they could do so. It's not particularly neat, but it has lots of information and references back to important pages and that kind of thing, so I'm pretty proud of it.

This is my fourth lab notebook since I started this job. I think they're getting more interesting as time goes on.

Glamour! Excitement! Flat Tires! Delays!

I just got back from a visit with CB. Part of the visit was spent at his company's annual business meeting. It was great to have the opportunity to meet his colleagues, and everyone was very nice and obviously passionate about what they do. The company organizes bird watching tours all over the world. They go to fabulously exotic places, see amazing wildlife, plants, geologic features and cultural attractions.

When CB and I first started dating, I had sort of a preconceived notion of what it would be like to be a tour leader. Travel (for free) to all these great places, be paid to birdwatch, what's not to like? The reality is that it is still a job. These folks work very hard to ensure that ALL the clients, some of whom are easy keepers and some who are not, have a good time and feel like they've gotten their money's worth.

And things happen, like the group that went to Alaska after CB's tour and got stuck in Nome for 4 or 5 days because of weather. They really do fix lots of flat tires too, or end up waiting for repairs.

But still, it made my lab job seem boring and routine by comparison. The funny thing was, I found myself having to think back, "now, why was it that I didn't end up being a field biologist?" And there is a reason. At the time I was going back for my Ph.D., I was wanting to have a kid. Sure, there are plenty of people who go out and do fieldwork and have families. But I had an interest in doing population genetics, and also saw a straight job as making the most sense when planning on getting pregnant.

This remembering of why I'm a lab monkey is related to another thing that happened. Lots of people asked me what I did for a living. In retrospect, I failed to get across the gist of why I do what I do, and this has made me want to get a better description that I can reel off when asked, "so, what is it you do?"

When I was in school, I remember a professor saying, "if you can't say what you do in a sentence, then you don't know enough about what you do." This is true to some extent, especially when one is around colleagues. However, this past trip has made me think maybe a two sentence one is more helpful. Or maybe I just need to rework my sentence.

That will be in the next post.

Pooch Plunge 2008

The City of Fort Collins has an annual Pooch Plunge at the end of every pool season.  For two evenings, after the pool is closed to human swimmers, they open the pool to dogs and their owners.  This was our second PP, and I think Sally really enjoyed herself.  There were some reluctant pooches, but no one had to tell Sally twice that the water was there for her enjoyment.  

She didn't want to get out to the deeper water and swim with the Labs, but was happy to play fetch with a tennis ball in the shallower water.  So much so that when the ball developed holes and sank when I threw it, she put her whole head under water and find the ball.  

At $8 a pooch, the City made some money on the event and it's a great PR gesture for them as well.  Colorado in general is very dog-friendly (and bike friendly too), but I think that this is an especially cool event.

And, she was very clean, if not a little chlorine-smelling.

Finally, a use for rutabagas

Yes, I'm afraid I don't care for rutabagas.  My sister used to put them in her stew and in my humble opinion, altered the taste of the whole thing (ewww!)

Well, at Michigan State, researchers are turning to rutabagas as a potential source of biofuel.  They are genetically modifying the rutabaga genome by inserting a modified version of a gene (the article doesn't say from what organism) that increases the plant's ability to turn carbohydrates into lipids.

The thinking is that if the plants can be modified to store lipids in their roots (which I think are actually tubers - modified stem tissue as opposed to actual roots) they can be grown for biofuel in places like Michigan, that can use all the new agribusiness it can get.

Ha! Here's a site devoted to rutabaga enthusiasts.  I didn't know that they're in the Brassicaceae, or Mustard family.  Last month was National Rutabaga Month, by the way.

on a lighter note...

Seen on PostSecrets this morning:

Rest in Peace, Leroy

When my sister was diagnosed with colon cancer in November 2006, I searched around the Internet for information. The NPR (National Public Radio) website has several blogs and one of them is called My Cancer, which up until a couple of days ago was written by Leroy Sievers, a former journalist who told his story through a series of blog posts for the two and half years he had the disease. This is a link to the blog. This is a link to NPR's remembrances of him.

Leroy died in his sleep Friday night. He and his partner, Laurie, were planning on transferring him to hospice soon, so I assume he died in his sleep in his own home.

I just visited the blog and became the 596th person to leave a comment there. Talk about having an impact. You wouldn't think this would be a new thing, to blog about cancer, but he just seemed to have a way of talking about the disease and how it affected so many aspects of his life. And, more importantly, he strove to be defined not soley by his cancer, but by other things he had done and believed in.

And the treatments. His cancer was in several places: spine, ribs, brain, lungs. And they would systematically treat each one and Leroy got more time out of it. He had many procedures besides chemo, and it was a lesson for me in what possible treatment options are available these days. He never went down the "alternative medicine" route, though, and I respect him for that.

He said that the blog was his greatest accomplishment. This from a person who was an embedded journalist in the Iraq war in 2003, and reported on crises from all over the world.

I hope that his partner Laurie will agree to carry on and blog about the grieving process. I know that when my sister died, there was a tendency for people to assume things had returned to normal before they really had.

*sigh* I'll miss you Leroy. It's like losing a friend.

Sure, I can do that

Way back when I was in graduate school, my advisor was co-author of a grant proposal that entailed developing microsatellite markers to obtain population genetic data for the species of interest. I remember her showing me the protocol and saying something like, "wow, this is a ton of work!"

Somehow, that has stuck with me and ever since, and I have assumed that I'd be unable to undertake developing the markers from scratch. For the work I've done so far at my current job, I'm using markers I found in the literature.

Well, I've been thinking about what I want to do next at work, seeing as I'm at a point where this question makes sense, and I thought, "I'd like to have the experience of developing microsats, maybe I should look into that."

And you know what? I can do it. We'll have to buy a few supplies, but it basically involves digesting genomic DNA with restriction enzymes, fishing for the markers you want with probes, and cloning and sequencing the pieces. Of course there's lots of steps, but none of the parts made me think I couldn't do it.

I've been doing a lot of cloning and sequencing lately, so I think maybe that part of it isn't nearly as daunting as it used to be. Perhaps the processes have become more forgiving, both cloning (follow the steps in the booklet), and sequencing (our great tech has the reagents already mixed and all we have to do is one more PCR and he takes it from there).

Funny how that worked. I only considered doing this project in the first place because I was a bit exasperated with the manuscript that never seems to end and was looking around for what I wanted to do (so there!).

Maybe I could be a Turbo Tech when I grow up.

Wolbachia - arthropod mind control

I'm working on developing additional markers for my mosquito projects. We have several microsatellite markers that work well, but in some places the extent of hybridization between taxa is so extensive that it would be nice to have a maternally inherited marker, to get more information as to what subspecies was originally the mother.

Enter Wolbachia. What's Wolbachia, you ask? The link goes to a nice Wikipedia article about it, but it's an endosymbiotic bacteria that is present in many arthropod species. Saying it's an endosymbiont is being kind of generous, though. It's more of a parasite, because it's able to control the reproductive efforts of the species it inhabits.

It was first discovered in a species that I work with, Culex pipiens, so it's full name is Wolbachia pipientis. Ha, it's kind of like Madonna, so famous that it doesn't need a last name!

One of the most striking effects of a Wolbachia infection is CI, or cytoplasmic incompatibility. This happens when infected males mate with unifected females, and the eggs die. CI can also happen if two individuals are infected with different strains of Wolbachia.

Other things that can happen as a result of Wolbachia infection include the killing of males due to infection, the feminization of males into sterile pseudo-females, and parthogenesis, where females can produce fertile eggs without fertilization from a male.

As you might imagine, this scenario sets the stage for some very interesting evolutionary biology. Patterns observed may not make sense unless one views them in light of possible Wolbachia infection. The rate of infection is high in Culex mosquitoes, but work is still being done to quantify all the strains.

My interest in Wolbachia at this point is that new maternally-inherited marker. A paper came out recently that detailed a protocol to amplify, with the same primer set, two different sized (and therefore subspecies-diagnostic) fragments from a gene for a surface protein. It is interesting because it's not mosquito DNA that I'm using for a mosquito marker; it's the Wolbachia. I have followed the protocol, but alas get results opposite of the paper. P is supposed to have the smaller fragment and Q the larger, but they are switched.

So I'm working on cloning and sequencing the fragment to figure out what's going on. If I can duplicate the results of the paper, it would be a useful marker, but if I can't, I'd like to know what's being amplified.

UPDATE: 8-13-08 It looks like this marker is not going to be as great as I thought. I ran the same set of samples with a known marker and again with this Wolbachia marker and got lots of drop out. That's when there's just no amplification. My known marker amplified in every individual, so I know the DNA's OK, but the Wolbachia one isn't going to cut it. Too bad, and the search for a maternally interited marker continues.

A PostSecret gem

On Postsecrets this morning...

Weekend activity

I'm not sure of the mental and/or emotional components that must be in place, but lately I've been going through my stuff, gearing up for either a big Goodwill donation or garage sale with my neighbor. I don't have enough stuff to justify my own sale, but enough that it's becoming a presence in my basement, and I really don't use the stuff anymore.

Likewise, I FINALLY (I have no idea what held me back, really) got rid of two large cardboard boxes, one filled with the biodegradable packing peanuts, that had been living in my garage for almost three years. The cardboard got flattened and we dropped it at the recycling center on our way down to Denver yesterday.

I also:
1. Washed my carmats (eww, how can they get so gross?)

2. Weed wacked the edges of my yard (at least the bindweed gives the illusion of a green yard)

3. Washed spider webs off the side of the house

4. Washed off a few large rocks that Mr W will paint to decorate the new mulched treelawn (the soil is finally dry enough to work this morning, so - yippee!)

5. Beat back the pumpkin vine, which is threatening to take over the entire alley

It seems this sort of productivity comes in bursts for me, but I'm glad that stuff got done.

image from here

Catching up with friends

I went over to a friend's house for dinner last night. We share an academic history; she was my advisor when I started my Ph.D. program. She, in my version of history anyway, took a chance on a non-traditional student who had expressed an interest in plant genetics and had never actually studied either beyond a couple of undergraduate courses.

I'd like to think it paid off. I did finish, got a couple of publications out of it, and have employment doing what I learned in school, even if it's with a different kingdom of organisms. Hey, DNA is DNA, whether it comes from a mosquito or a plant.

She ended up taking a different path, and leaving academia. She now works as a safety officer for one of the several government agencies in town. In the end, it was the rate of publishing required of a junior faculty member that made her realize she didn't want to continue.

I am hearing this sentiment loud and clear lately, as the manuscript I submitted was returned by the journal I submitted it to because they thought it wasn't as good of a fit as I did. I spent most of the last week reformatting it, and earning a bit of scorn from my boss, who seems to think I made things less clear in my attempts to streamline my thoughts.

I have come to the conclusion that boss and I have different writing styles, and there's not much that can be done besides acquiesce to his opinion in order to get it out the door. Case in point, I lifted a sentence from the manuscript and send it to friend La Guera, who is my source for things grammatical because she teaches Spanish. Yes, indeed this sentence, which boss marked in red, "not a sentence" was indeed a sentence, albeit one with a little different sentence structure.

I like to believe I'm in the process of learning how to do this, and that it will take a few more papers until the process is smooth, and that it will get easier. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, but if I want a career doing research, it has to be.

As to my friend/former advisor, she is happy, leading a full life, and.... back in school! Yes, in order for her to turn her term position into a FTE, she needs to get a MS in something safety related, which her employer is willing to pay her for. So it looks like that will work out.

Me, I'm not ready to change careers quite yet.

How does my garden grow

The mulch project drags on. If you've not been privy to this saga, I have a tree lawn that is hard to water and cut, so I wanted to cover it with something to make it look nicer. I stopped watering it some time last summer , and it has looked like hell for weeks (but the weeds were doing well).

Tom (or Saint Tom, as I will refer to the gardening services guy because he worked a miracle with his rototiller) turned up the soil on the tree lawn first thing Monday morning. Then on Tuesday the nice people from the landscape supply company unloaded the three cubic yards of mulch in the street in front of my house.

Come Tuesday afternoon, I'm ready to start raking dirt into its final formation, and moving mulch. Then the rain came. I know it's just a coincidence, but for the two days we've had torrential downpours in the afternoon. Wow, lots of rain.

So my mulch pile waits. I'm happy it didn't wash away with the rain, but now it will be a few days before I can work on this. It's just so funny how this project has taken a lot of mental energy, and then, once everything's in place, I have to wait on rain.

It's OK, though, it will look nice. In other news, get a load of my Black Eyed Susans! If you garden, get yerself some of these babies, because they look like this for weeks. It's the most amazing thing; they don't seem to be dying off. That's them in the picture above. You can also see the mulch pile, drying out from the first rain.

I'll post more pictures soon, when the light is better. I'm happy with my garden this year. One of the things I really like about gardening is how it changes over time. Sure, the garden seems to peak in terms of how much stuff is flowering, but stuff comes and goes and I love investigating to see how things are doing. I put in a bunch of perennials, but am leaving space for annuals that catch my interest.

And the pumpkin. I think it's cool how bees will sleep (that's what it looks like, anyway) in the flowers, which are probably 6"x6" (plenty of room). We've got one fruit that's really taking off, and Mr W and I look at it in the morning before we get in the car. The thing is growing 1/2" in diameter a day, it seems. For all the photosynthesis going on in that monster of a plant, I guess it's not too much of a surprise.

Plant Rarity - Plant of the Week (month? summer?) #2 Hybridization

I wanted to write about a few aspects of my research from school, specifically hybridization/polyploidy and population genetics . Here's a start on the hybridization stuff.

A couple of papers came out in the early 1990's by Norman Ellstrand, telling a cautionary tale that it was possible that rare plants could be hybridized out of existence by a process called "genetic swamping". Swamping occurs when the rare plant is outnumbered by a nearby closely related plant, and the volume of heterospecific pollen results in fewer and fewer pure offspring of the rare species. One of the best known cases of swamping is in the Catalina Island Mahogany (that CB and I got at least sort of close to when we went whale watching), Cercocarpus traskiae. It occurs on a specific soil type (on an island, no less), and the current population estimate is that there are 7 mature individuals and 20-50 immatures. Another species of Cercocarpus, C. betuloides var. blancheae, is also present on the island and studies have shown the two species hybridize. So much so that the original work by Rieseberg et al. (1989) suggested that there were only two pure C. traskiae individuals and what they thought were five more were actually hybrids.

This is a recent status report that has more details, but the short version is that C. traskiae is in a holding pattern after workers removed the more common species and fenced off the area against herbivores.

I looked at two species of Physaria, both endemic to Colorado. The rarer of the two is P. bellii, which occurs in three counties, and the more common is P. vitulifera, which occurs in six. That's a P. bellii photo up at the top, notice the rounded leaves. The ranges of the two overlap a little, and reports of purported hybrids in that area got me interested in the project in the first place.

But wait, there's more. This is a wierd thing about Physaria, but one species can have populations that are different ploidy levels. The genus is sort of wacky to begin with because of their generally low numbers of chromosomes. For example, in some populations of P. vitulifera, all members are diploid, with 8 chromosomes. Other populations are tetraploid, and have 16 chromosomes. They are all P. vitulifera, but the tetraploid ones have an extra set of chromosomes. It isn't known how the offspring do when a diploid individual crosses with a tetraploid, thereby making a triploid individual with 12 chromosomes. Generally, though, triploidy isn't a good thing, because it leaves some chromosomes without partners when it's time for meiosis. Below is a shot of P. bellii root tip cells, with 8 chromosomes.

So one of the things I investigated was the ploidy levels of a sample of P. vitulifera populations that were near P. bellii populations. The hypothesis was that if nearby populations of P. vitulifera were tetraploid, they wouldn't be a threat to P. bellii, which is always diploid and has 8 chromosomes. I was extremely lucky that there were so few chromosomes to work with, because I still did hundreds of squashes to get enough data to make some generalizations. The populations of P. vitulifera near P. bellii were generally tetraploid, except those that occurred close to the hybrid population, suggesting that hybridization between the species would likely be confined to known sites, and therefore P. bellii wasn't threatened by genetic swamping.

Above is P. vitulifera in the rocky soil that it's found in. Notice the leaves that are kind of violin shaped.

OK, enough for one post. I'll cover the population genetics stuff next time.

C. traskiae pic from here.

Ellstrand, NC. (1992) Gene flow by pollen: Implications for plant conservation genetics. Oikos 63: 77-86.

Ellstrand NC, Elam DR (1993) Population genetic consequences of small population size: implications for plant conservation. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 24: 217-242.