Thursday, May 30, 2013

Squeezed Out



This bird high above this densely populated part of the world seems to want to ask us a question. Is there any life down there besides human? Is there any room for him and those of his kind?

We've made this world what it is today. We've squeezed out every other life form but our own. Still, even the most fragile beings have learned to live around us and with us. They may not thrive as they once did before we built and bulldozed and paved and poisoned. They may not survive the dangers we present to them daily: belching smoke stacks, spinning wind turbines, speeding cars, insecticides, fishing lines and gear left to harm whatever comes into its path, and lead shot from hunters who leave carrion for wildlife to consume and ultimately sicken.

Unknowingly we kill them, willfully we kill them, and for everyone of us who protects them there is another who would feel nothing at their loss.  I know this. I have seen it with my own eyes. We all have.

Since childhood I've been a softhearted animal lover. It's ingrained in me, but still I learn each day about the lives of these others who live a hard fought life, searching for sustenance in a world that is sometimes not abundant with its resources, in a world where we have removed or revoked their right to resources.  Yet every year, birds build nests and in their own purposeful way try to raise another family to keep their kind in this inhospitable world of humans. 

Imagine if we could just all let them live their God-given lives.  Would it hurt us one little bit to have a care for others besides ourselves?  I don't know who to credit for this photo, but it made me stop to think.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013


The "Little World" of Lichen


Always fascinated with the idea of "little worlds" within the world that we humans occupy, I was examining a apple tree twig covered in a spring green-colored lichen recently. Lichen is everywhere, a fungus we find clinging to rocks and trees. In addition to the sage green flaky material coating the twig, there were interesting black spots that looked like little drums. I suspected they must be spores but really wanted to know what they looked like close up.  I work for a company that makes the most powerful microscopes there are - electron microscopes - so I thought I'd bring the twig into work and ask the scientists there if it would make for an interesting sample.  

A funny thing about the scanning electron microscope (SEM) is that you can look at a plain black piece of material at extremely high magnifications (5X as high as 1,000,000X for example) and see incredible details where there were none with the naked eye. Or you can look at something very curious, and put it in the microscope and it doesn't turn out to look like much at all at high magnification. 

Not so with the lichen. The images taken at different magnifications revealed the little world I suspected was in that green flaky material stuck to the dead twig.  At first the extreme close ups (in this case at 160X) were disorienting, but the scientist who took the images explained we were actually looking at the spores themselves, inside the dish-shaped, flat black area of the lichen - just one of the tiny little drum shapes called apothecia that appeared only in a few places on the twig.  Inside of that flat, dull black area of a single apothecium there are spores on stems just waiting to be released and start lichen life anew.
Looking from a little further away, (50X and 17X), the beauty of the whole colony of apothecia can be better appreciated. Of course with a scanning
electron microscope the images you can get are only in black and white, but they can be colorized in Photoshop.  And, as is the case with many biological specimens, the lichen is perfectly beautiful under the optical microscope that most of us are familiar with, and it is very colorful all by itself, even if it does look a little like frog warts.

Sometimes a closer look really can open up a whole new little world!   


Seated at the Scanning Electron Microscope.
My scientist coworkers: Vern Robertson, Dave Edwards,
and Breno Leite.


The lichen under the optical microscope. See the drums?


Tuesday, January 29, 2013


Star Struck at Six

Seeing Ricky Nelson in Concert at Pleasure Island



In the early sixties, the world belonged to my two teenaged sisters. The caboose in the family, I would come of age in a different era, but for then, I watched and learned as they skipped from sock hops to pep club rallies, had first dates, and played the latest rock n' roll on our HiFi while we learned the twist. 

Their only anchor in life was their six-year-old sister, because they often had to babysit. For me, it meant tagging along on many of their adventures.  I cruised the boulevard  with them "American Graffiti" style in a someone's very big car, listening to the Supremes or the Four Seasons.  I had crushes on all of their boyfriends. One, who would become my brother-in-law, gave me a dime and told me to call him when I grew up. 

We had an older sister-in-law, too, a real southern beauty who willingly drove us places. One June day in 1962, the four of us piled into the family car to go to Pleasure Island, an amusement park in Wakefield, Massachusetts, where I attended my very first concert. 

We drove into the park through it's live-action entryway - over railroad tracks where a real train being chased by cowboys and Indians on horseback passed by. We'd come for the concert, but Pleasure Island had more than enough attractions while we waited for it to begin. I loved the crooked house, where I held on to side rails and walked through at an awkward angle; the burro ride on the little "mountain trail" which I wasn't old enough for, and alas, never would be, and Moby Dick, a mechanical whale who rose from the pond and blew water through his spout. The animals, the miniature cars...there were so many things that rivaled Disneyland, which was only some far off place we'd probably never go anyway.

When the time came, we were among the first of the crowd of crazed teenagers squeezing through the opening in the stockade fence that cordoned off the Showbowl concert area.  Embrazened by our solidarity, we were standing right at the foot of the stage looking up adoringly when Ricky Nelson emerged from behind a door with his guitar. His was the familiar face from one of my favorite t.v. shows, Ozzie and Harriet. My mouth hung open in pure surprise as I heard him play the songs we listened to on the radio, now seeing the real Ricky himself, and not in black and white. Every song he played, we knew - "Hello Marylou, goodbyeheart!" - but whenever he stopped, people would shout "Play Traveling Man!" one he was best known for. "I'm a traveling man, made a lot of stops all over the world," and he went on to single out the Polynesian baby over the sea, the sweet Fraulein, the Eskimo, and the China doll - all the lucky girls he knew in every port.  As I remember, we were right at his feet, but just seeing the television star and oh-so-handsome young man may have made me a bit faint, even at six.  He was a young girl's safer answer to Elvis, his music was upbeat and had no suggestive words or swinging hips. We had yet to experience the magical mystery tour of the Beatles and the depth of meaning in the folk rock from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, which was popular when I was a teenager, or the showmanship of Michael Jackson. We loved Ricky.

Fast forward to 1985, and Pleasure Island was a thing of the past, but Ricky was back in Massachusetts on tour.  I had to go, even though my sisters were no longer interested. He had long ago faded from popularity, but many retro concerts were being held in Newburyport during the summer Homecoming Days, so my husband and some friends made the trek. Sharing a pair of binoculars from our bleacher seats, we could see he was still handsome. He gave a quiet almost intimate concert, playing old familiar songs one after the other.  During a break, he shared a little humor with the audience, and since it was hot he wiped his face with a towel, then threw it into the screaming crowd of girls who clamored at the foot of the stage.  It felt a little like we were at Rick Nelson's "Garden Party," where we came to reminisce with old friends, share some memories, and listen to a few old songs.  They say you can never go back, but for a little while, I relived the days when the music that underscored our lives was fun and upbeat, and life was safely scripted. Ozzy and Harriet would have it no other way. 

That was to be one of Ricky's last concerts. His D3 plane crashed on New Year's Eve 1985.  There were so many musicians killed that way, traveling from concert to concert to bring us joy and memories. When we talk about the past, it's often the music of those times that weave their way into the fabric of the story.  Ricky's music will be forever entwined with memories of my first concert and the three young women in my family who let me tag along.