...quote from 40 years ago

In last Thursday's Finger Lakes Times under "Days of Yore" a section that recalls interesting events locally and/or nationally 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago on this date I noticed an interesting comment made by then President Nixon in 1971. Needless to say it spawned my lastest editorial cartoon shown below.

It was fun to do and I sent a copy to the FL Times, should they care to post in this weeks paper. Enjoy!

Anxious!

Just got on to the computer this morning after working on school things:

• correcting papers
• thinking about this weeks' topics (Biology - reproduction topics /AP Biology classes - ecology topics) and all the subtopics(mitosis, meiosis, gametogenesis, & hormones/keystone species, interspecific competition, energy flow, niches, etc) that will need to be addressed this coming week.
• thinking about a variety of ways to present subtopics that will appeal to those who don't get it the first time through (notes didn't work, so maybe a crossword puzzle? ...another white board illustration? ...an analogy, ...Hmmn?? what else could I use???).
• thinking about what materials I will need ... physical/hands on stuff (yesterday collecting pill bugs), internet resources (WXXI - TV On Demand), familar practical examples for kids (plant cuttings on your mother or grandmother's kitchen window sill).
• sketching out how I will access whether or not students understand the concepts to be covered this week (multiple choice?? ...free response questions?? ... scoring and weighting questions? ... and then the grading and logging of computer grades.)
• the constant reaching out and inviting students back to the topic of discussion from their "little brush fire conversations"
• ...the distractions: ipods & the daggling wires to ear plugs; hands under the desk to text and/or read text messages --- so you give another reminder to put them away, while having this mental image of placing the device on the floor and crushing it

...and then I looked at my current computer desk top background photo taken last October while backpacking the Long Trail in Vermont.

I know I will be more than ready to turn the classroom over to the regular biology teacher whom I am filling in for while she is on maternity leave until spring break in April.

75 Salads and Still Counting!

Salads topped with shredded carrots from last summers' garden. It has been fun harvesting lettuce, kale, broccoli & collard leaves from the green house since November. With a mulch base under the growing beds and a garden hose circulating water into the basement to a copper coil heat exchanger mounted over the furnace and then back into two water filled, black 50 gallon drums; the green house has been more productive than last year.

Crossing the Icefall

About 3am, Sue notice water dripping down the wall by the door of our back porch. We have had no real ice melting thaws since late Decemember, so water was coming in due to ice build up in the divide where the east/west roof, merges with the north/south roof. While removing snow with a roof rake and salting the ice, I was entranced by the how similar the ice on the roof was to photos I have seen of the Klumbu icefall that Mt. Everest climbers must cross in order to reach the summit. So out came the camera and below are two photos. One is a googled, pirated image of the Kkumbu icefall and the other is of my roof with penciled in figures.

Interesting Book ... check it out.

Just finished reading 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot - a N.Y. Times best seller. I first heard about the book in an interview with the author on one of NPR's 'talking head' shows. I was interested in the interview and made a note of the book because during my teaching career days, I had introduced my students to karyotyping (...examining chromosomes) by ordering "HeLa" cells from Cellserv, a biotech company in the D.C. area. Students would prep microscope slides; drop fixed "HeLa" cells from various heights to 'splat' onto microscope slides; followed by staining in an assembly line process; then zooming to 1000X under a microscope to observe and count chromosomes. They could see banding on the various shaped and sized human chromosomes; as well as count the number of chromosomes in cells.

The "Hela" cells we used in lab, were cultured from the original cells removed from Henrietta Lack when she was being treated for cervical cancer in the 'colored only' section at John Hopkins in Baltimore. She died from the cancer a few weeks later in 1951. Her cells were prolific growers under laboratory conditions and have been used in cancer research & teaching for many years. The extended Lack's family recieved virtually no explaination or recognition of the significants of this cell line that has and continues to contribute so much to our understanding of cancer, genetics, tissue culture, etc today.

After reading the story of the Lack's family, I personally was struck by the importances of good education and racial equality; two comodities readily denied the Lack's family over the decades.

It's a good, fast read and available in the Pioneer Library system.

Low Budget Good Deeds

Yesterday while finishing a 12.4 mile walking loop, I noticed a letter in the snow along side of Blue Cut road. I stopped, picked it up and found it was from a local resident, stamped and addressed to someone at a correctional facility in NYS. I have no idea who the individuals whose names were on the letter are and tucked the letter into my wind breaker pocket, then proceeding on towards home. While starting up the hill on Marbletown road out of Newark, I stopped to visit with an elderly man trying to reattach his mailbox with bare, white fingers in the 20F temperatures. He was having a difficult time threading the nut & washer through the mailbox mounting frame to the stove bolt with numb fingers. I helpped him complete the job, but not before my fingers became very numb too. He thanked me before I finished walking the remaining 1.5 miles home to dry out the letter and get it into Monday's mail pickup.

PS - "Who was that masked man? ...Hi! Ho! Silver!"

Looking Back at 2010

Another year has come and gone. While out walking today I thought about the year past and made the following estimates about the occupation of my time over the last 365 days. I would like to think that my preoccupations around the home and our travels were environmentally friendly. With the completion of yesterdays' walk into town to pick up a few non-domestically produced items for our New Year dinner today; I completed my goal of walking/backpacking 1500 miles in 2010. [I also cashed in $37.50 worth of returnable cans/bottles picked up along the road side in and around Marbletown.] Checking the odometers of my rusty truck (... missed 'cash for clunkers') and our car, I noted that we drove a combined total of 14,039 miles; less than the USA average for a couple in our age group*.

* http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

NEW YEAR...we are here!