photo « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo

hobby / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Jun 20

Pictures of small fossilized creatures

Here are more marine animals turned to stone by time. I picked these up off the shore of a lake and now that they’ve been documented here for no reason I will return them whence they came. It’s important that these things go back to the wild. They’re destined to roam free, stepped on and kicked and maybe picked up and marveled at by children of all ages.

And, also, to take up a good day’s worth of space here on this humble little website. And maybe on social media. There’s always a need for content over there.

Check out these articulations. I believe these, at least some of these anyway, are comatulida, which is an order of crinoids.

Those layers, I just learned, are called synostosis.

Even on the broken ones, I like the ridges. These things have so much character.

If you squinted just right, and I put some greenery and fake foliage on the paper I might be able to trick you into thinking these were castle towers or something. Maybe you’d think I got them from a train set.

Donut or Cheerio?

OK, that’s a Cheerio. This is definitely a donut.

So there’s three types of the common crinoid fossils things in my experience — and the third one is relatively new to me. There’s the one that’s got dirt or mud or fossilized sediment inside. The more desirable version are the ones that are still hollow, like our friends above which resemble tasty treats. Through that axial canal runs, which ran through all the stem segments of the living organism, you would find the nerves and the digestive system that sent nutrients along the body.

Most of these look like they might be cyclocyclicus or pentagonacyclicus, according to this 1968 study I’ve suddenly found myself reading. And the new type, to me, are the ones with the specific shapes through the columnal feature. Like these.

Let’s take a closer look. This one is a floricyclus.

I just found something called The Fossil Forum and two things are clear. The little samples I find are relatively modest and, second, I can’t be sucked in my something called The Fossile Forum.

That 1968 paper — Classification and nomenclature of fossil crinoids based on studies of dissociated parts of their columns by Raymond C. Moore and Russell M. Jeffords — has almost 30 pages full of photos. I don’t see this one there, and it’s not even especially rare.

I’ve seen it’s kind in similarly vague and casual photographs like this one before, so it’s nothing new.

Please remember, dear expert reader who finds this at some point in the future, this is obviously and quite clearly not my field. I’d love to be corrected, however, on any of these errors, big or small.

adventures / family / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
22
Jun 20

Mondays always have the worst titles, don’t they?

It’s Monday again, and welcome back to the part of the week in which we work on things. We’re still doing that. The emails are flying, the Slack channels are a-flurry. The video chats continue apace.

I had a two-hour student chat on Friday, and what’s more, the students are the one that asked for the meeting.

Hanging out with students is always fun, even when they are work meetings. Some students, when everyone was still living under a more restrictive lockdown, invited me to a few social video chats. That was kind of them. They are thoughtful and fun. And it was great to hear from them, see how they were doing, and to make them laugh. I became the butt of a lot jokes in those chats. It was worth it. Anyway, the video chats on Friday were about work. And going forward there will be more of those as we try to implement the things that will be our normal routines for the fall.

Normal. Routine. Aren’t those some concepts?

I suppose some people have routines that won’t change over much. And all of us will get used to the new rigors and routines soon enough. I’ve had the good fortune to be in my share of meetings to discuss what the new routines will be. The long and the short of it is that it will be odd getting there, weird getting used to it, and then a slow inconvenience we’ll work through.

But that’s what you do. You work through it. We’ll all have it to work through, all of us, in some way or another. We may as well do it with a smile. A smile that no one can see beneath a mask. Better learn to smile with your eyes.

Did you know you can smile with your whole body? When I used to do costume character work, in high school and college, you couldn’t help but to smile for pictures under that big helmet. Pretty quickly you noticed. After some time you manage to stop smiling under the headgear. But then you realized, or if you’re like me, you had to be told, to smile anyway. It comes through in the photos, in your posture, in your attitude. So you may as well smile.

By the way, when I smile, my eyes get small. So if you see me squinting, just know.

Here’s a routine, the cats!

Phoebe has a ‘You shall not pass!’ mentality in the hallway. It’s an effect roadblock. She slows you down by her cuteness, and you’re thrown off your game by a sudden urge to rub that belly.

It’s an even more effective obstacle when she does it on the stair landing. You’ve got to turn to the right, maybe you want to avoid a step, but there’s also this furry little thing.

I’m not clear at all how that’s comfortable, but that’s a cat’s posture for you.

Poseidon got interested in the camera lens.

And he’s always interested in this stovetop cover. I built this to keep the cats off the stove. Now they just sit on this thing. And, apparently, they’ll sit on it anywhere.

I’d moved the cover to another part of the countertop to clean the actual stovetop, and he’ll apparently sit on it wherever. So that was, one supposes, a good Saturday project.

Speaking of Saturday, we went for a walk through the woods, and we ran across a spotted fawn that was completely unconcerned by us. Mom was off looking for a snack and then she came back, saw us and we all stayed a respectful distance from one another.

Saturday was our anniversary, too. We spent most of the day reading through old tweets that our friends wrote that established the precise timeline of events. We looked at the menu for our wedding dinner, the eye is still drawn directly to the typo all these years later, and looked through our wedding photos and the honeymoon book. We made ourselves a crab dinner to celebrate, since we aren’t going out to eat. We listened to Sam Cooke and Al Green while we cracked shells. For a day, it was delightful.

This was right after the ceremony. We got married outdoors, under a canopy, in one of the hottest places in the country on the hottest day of the year. The heat index was 127. I was wearing summer wool. There is no such thing as summer wool. My bride looked beautiful:

(Still does!) After the ceremony was complete and we walked back up the aisle we walked inside a building. The first things she said as we began our marriage were “Oh thank goodness, air conditioning!”

For an anniversary, it should have been a more elaborate day. But, for an anniversary, revisiting the day was also perfect.

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
19
Jun 20

More little things

Today’s bike ride was all about hill repeats. We would go out to one of the lakes and find a great big hill and go up and down it a few minutes at a time. This particular torture apparently makes me a better climber. as I am not a climber and still no better at it, clearly I’m doing something wrong. There are many reasons, I understand them all.

Anyway, being a sunny and warm Friday, we decided to avoid the lakes because there are often boats pushing trucks toward them. We went on campus instead, which was delightfully quiet.

So quiet, in fact that we saw a guy spraying a bit of herbicide on one of our trips up this great big hill we found. He stood out because he was there, I guess. How often do you note a guy just doing his job? Someone else did, too. On my next trip up the hill two police cars rolled up, and then a third cruiser. On the next trip a fourth cruiser was out front of the building. They took his ID, talked to him under a shade tree. He’d shed the high pressure sprayer that was on his back. And the conversation, whatever it was, took forever. For my next eight or nine trips up the hill they stood there chatting.

Eventually the fourth and the third cruisers melted away, and some time after that the first two officers that rolled up moved on as well, leaving the guy to pack his stuff up and go about his day.

The worst part of it all is that just after the police left we were done with our hill repeats. So the poor guy probably thinks the two people who were riding up and down the hill, up and down the hill, up and down the hill, were the ones that called in the four cops on him. We were not. I am not one to think a guy with a high pressure sprayer on his back and obviously tending to weeds is a bad person. But, then again, I have a long record of being pro-landscaping.

Pictures of small things time. I picked up these crinoids a few days ago down by the lake while The Yankee swam. For this installment I remembered two important steps in light box photography.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, you see, so the tricks are coming back one by one. I don’t know all the best techniques because I’ve only dabbled in this style of photography. Probably on the next batch or two I will peak. Maybe, on the next batch, I’ll remember to focus!

Anyway, there are around 600 crinoid species left in the world, but a few hundred million years ago there were many more sorts of these little creatures. Limestone beds are good places to find these fossilized fragments.

I’m using three lamps and a translucent storage box for this and I suppose it’s coming along nicely for a project that has cost me no money and doesn’t have to be perfectly perfect. But wouldn’t it be nicer if it was?

Well, there’s always next week for that. For now, it’s time for the weekend.

IU / photo / podcast / Thursday — Comments Off
18
Jun 20

Yeah, this got away from me

Down at the lake today we didn’t see anyone we know, which is a change of pace. The last few times we’ve been we’ve run into some work friends. Today there were a couple of young families and they stayed mostly away, but for the occasional friendly kid who would wander over.

You can learn a lot about kids and parents and life by hearing just enough of the conversations and negotiations that go on as non sequiturs. And you can tell, pretty quickly, if there’s a parent that plays the heavy. No one wants to do that, of course, because it’s a warm day and you’re on the lake and it’s summertime and everything’s great on the water. How could everything not be great?

There were a few kayaks out on the water, and boats way up and away from this slew, which has generally been a quite and casual place. I sat under a shade tree and watched The Yankee swim and the butterflies dance:

I forgot to mention this here earlier this week, but there’s a new show for you to listen to, if you haven’t already subscribed over there at Soundcloud dot com or any of the other locations where your many fine podcasts are found. Subscribe! Or you might have to wait to find them here, when I can apparently get around to it.

Anyway, this is assistant dean Jill Shedd, of IU’s school of education. She also sits on her local school corporation’s board. It just so happens that not too long before we recorded this interview the state said “What we will be doing this fall is … up to the local schools … ” so we talked about what the fall might look like. The answer is, it depends.

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU – Sending children back to school in the fall

But there’s also a lot at stake here. Safety for students and adults, first and foremost. Secondly, there’s an issue of whether teachers will come back. There’s been a national survey, which we discussed briefly here, that should give one pause. And there’s another survey that suggests parents are thinking about it, too. That, as Dean Shedd points out, could impact money.

Fortunately the schools in this state won’t see any budget cuts this year. The governor has said that this week, so it’s a good time to have this episode of the podcast, and you should listen to it, is what we’re saying.

And now I have to wait for the next round of guests to come my way. I hope the people who insisted on being a part of that booking process will work quickly on that front. We, as is said in the most detestable line of dialog ever, will see.

A close second is ‘Time will tell.’ Sure time will tell, but only if your construct of time removes it from the abstract and applies some sentience. Or assumes that, by the time that time does, in fact, tell, I will still have the capacity to appreciate what time has told us. We’ll see about that, too.

Tied and at a distant third on the list of most detestable sayings are “I am sorry, sir, but we are out of ice cream,” and “Our internet is down.”

What’s on your list of worst sayings? And have noticed how the list of wurst sayings is so different, and so much better?

Covid-19 / friends / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
Jun 20

Stand over there, well away, wash your hands, and …

I took the rare trip out today for a few important grocery supplies. I noticed pretty quickly how everyone’s mask estimation game is so popular. I noticed how pretty quickly, and throughout my brief trip, how I keep wondering if people are judging one another.

I wonder who should aggravate me more: the person not wearing a mask, or the person wearing a mask to protect their throat and chin. A lot contender to consider there is the person wearing a mask over their mouth, but not their nose.

The circulatory system, it seems, is a mystery to some fully grown adult human beings who are capable of otherwise sustaining themselves.

Anyway, I needed groceries. I still need a haircut. You need to wear a mask.

Look! It is easy being green.

A friend made this one for me, because she’s awesome. I’d brag on her by name, but she might not want the advertisement. Now I owe her a dinner one of these days when we can safely do those normal sorts of things again.

It’s not the time to let up. It’s the time to reconsider your habits. What we’ve done these past few months, we must continue to do again. And the best way to get back to normal, is to be diligent today. Part of looking out for yourself is looking out for each other. A big part of looking out for each other right now is to take a few simple precautions. Wear your mask.