Liberal Arts Blog — The Magic of October, The Joy Of Phenology, The Mystery Of The Vanishing Websites
Liberal Arts Blog — Wednesday is the Joy of Science, Engineering, and Technology Day
Today’s Topic — The Magic of October, the Joy of Phenology, the Mystery of the Vanishing Websites
Last time, a look at how AI can cure the current “epidemic of loneliness.” Today, we change the channel from psychology and technology to biology.
My mission is to turn you into an amateur phenologist and to pass the bright-shining torch to as many of your friends and family as soon as possible, because now is the time.
Phenology is the branch of biology that focuses on seasonal change. And October is the most magic of all months. In Boston, October begins with a world still summer green.
By the end of the month, the world is one of “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” (Shakespeare) In between, a glorious symphony of many movements from yellow to orange, to red. Around each bend a different blend of instruments from maples, oaks, locusts, sweet gum.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BRANCH OF PHENOLOGY? WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN GRADE SCHOOL? HIGH SCHOOL? COLLEGE THAT MOST FASCINATES YOU?
1. Spring and fall are phenology heaven.
2. But October to me is in general the month of most dramatic change (in the Boston area at least).
3. The “founding father of phenology” is widely considered to be the British naturalist Robert Marsham (1708–1797) “He is best known for his Indications of Spring, the phenology notes in which he recorded 27 signs of spring, starting in 1736 and continuing for over 60 years. Successive generations of his family added to his work until well into the 20th century and this information now provides immensely valuable data to the UK phenology database, giving us a wealth of knowledge about how spring is influenced by prevailing weather conditions,”
NB: The most famous American phenologist is the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), who meticulously recorded seasonal changes in his native Concord.
OCTOBER IS A GREAT TIME TO LEARN THE NAMES OF AT LEAST THREE NEW SPECIES PER YEAR — EG. THE HONEY LOCUST, THE SWEET GUM, AND THE SOURWOOD
1. The honey locusts are one of the most spectacular October marvels. Did you catch them in the first two weeks of the month?
2. Many are now past peak. Don’t miss them next year.
3. The pulp of the honey locust pods are poisonous, but that of the black locusts (which are shorter) are not.
NB: The honey locusts have smaller, even-numbered leaflets. Black locust have larger, odd-numbered leaflets.
The black locusts are taller and are less likely to have thorns on the trunks.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING TREE MAPS OF HARVARD YARD AND CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
1. Over a decade ago, it was easy to find a website called “Crimson Canopy” with detailed maps of every section of Harvard Yard with each tree identified.
2. The website, the work of an undergraduate who went off to Stanford Medical School back in 2007 or so, seems to have vanished.
3. In about 2014 a few Adams House What Matters Table participants applied for a grant from Harvard to make an updated Harvard Yard tree website. They got the grant and did so.
This morning I failed to find this site either. A third failure: it seems to me that the city of Cambridge had at one point a decent tree website which included the Harvard Square area. But this morning, I again came up empty.
NB: Anyone out there interested in picking up the torch?
https://www.britannica.com/science/phenology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENT BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to science, engineering, or technology.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to science and engineering.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
