Up Next: A Bird Walk and Talk with Jeff Wells

August 17, 2012

Attention bird lovers! On Saturday, Aug. 18, at 3 p.m., top ornithologist Jeff Wells will lead a short bird walk at The Naturalist's Notebook. He will give a talk at 4 p.m. based on the new book he and his wife, Allison, have written, Maine's Favorite Birds. It will be a fun and relaxed afternoon—come for the walk, the talk or both, and enjoy refreshments on the Notebook's lovely deck afterward. Learn more about Maine's birds!

Here's some background on the two authors, from the publisher's biography:

"Jeffrey V. Wells and Allison Childs Wells are native Mainers whose families in Maine go back hundreds of years. Both lifelong birders, they began birding together when they met in college. After graduating from the University of Maine at Farmington, they went on to graduate programs at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where Jeff received his M.S. and Ph.D. and Allison, her M.F.A. Both stayed on at Cornell, Allison as communications director for the world-renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Jeff, also at the Lab, as director of bird conservation for National Audubon (first for New York State, then for the U.S.)

"They returned to Maine in 2004 to raise their child among family and Maine's spectacular environment. They have published hundreds of bird-related articles and have collaborated on many projects, including as co-contributors to the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior and as creators and webmasters of the websites arubabirds.com and bonairebirds.com, which provide field identification and bird-finding information about the birds of those popular vacation islands.

"Jeff is also the author of Birder's Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk, published in October 2007 by Princeton University Press, and editor of Boreal Birds of North America, published in 2011 by University of California Press. Allison was coeditor of Birder's Life List and Diary (third edition) and contributed many bird family accounts to Scholastic's New Book of Knowledge.

"Jeff is now senior scientist for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign and is a visiting fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Allison is senior director of public affairs for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. They live in Gardiner with their son and two bird-watching indoor cats."

I should add that Jeff and Allison's new book is superbly illustrated by Evan Barbour (whose work you can see at http://evanbarbour.com/

Don't Forget... Naturalist and writer Bernd Heinrich will be giving a Notebook-sponsored talk at the Schoodic Education and Research (SERC) Institute at 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 20, and will be appearing and doing a 4 p.m. talk at The Naturalist's Notebook on Tuesday, Aug. 21. That same day—we're calling it Big Bang Day—Olympic runner Lynn Jennings will be talking with Sports Illustrated's Craig Neff about running and Olympics at an 11:30 picnic on the Seal Harbor green. Bring lunch if you'd like!

We used a strange corn starch and water mixture as our canvas and food coloring as our paint.

Painting On Corn Starch (Or How to Have Fun with a Non-Newtonian Liquid)

January 30, 2012

A burst of scientific creativity struck in the kitchen. Notebook correspondent Betsy of New York had emailed us a chemistry.about.com recipe for making bouncy polymer balls from simple ingredients. Two of those ingredients were corn starch and water. Oh, we've combined those two before, said a member of The Naturalist's Notebook's Spontaneous Creativity Team. Another team member said that a mixture of corn starch and water, blended in the right ratio, takes on a bizarre texture—not exactly solid, not exactly liquid, and oddly plastic-like in its feel.

Out came a mixing bowl and a box of corn starch. The kitchen started to get messy. The white glop in the bowl quickly turned to an alien substance.

We made a 37-second video (click below) showing the strange not-liquid-not-solid quality of the corn-starch-and-water goo:

This mixture—sometimes compared to the sticky gunk called oobleck in the Dr. Seuss classic Bartholomew and the Oobleck—is what scientists call a "non-Newtonian liquid." Isaac Newton posited that liquids flow at consistent, predictable rates. As the above video shows, the corn-starch-and-water glop does not do that. Why? Science Bob explains it this way:

"The size, shape, and makeup of the corn starch grains cause the corn starch to 'lock up' and hold its shape when pressure is applied to it. People have filled small pools with oobleck and they are able to walk across the surface of it (as long as they move quickly.) As soon as they stop walking, they begin to sink."

Lest you think Isaac Newton didn't know his laws of science, the mixture we're discussing is more precisely described as a "suspension" of undissolved corn starch particles in water. That suspension will separate if left untouched and thus is not a pure liquid.

But we were more concerned with doing something creative than with defying the greatest genius in science history. We brought out little vials of food coloring and began making art. I'll let the photos and captions tell the rest.

From the surface emerged a blue bird's head, facing up, with its beak open.

We spun the bowl to create spirals and other curling shapes.

We made prints by quickly patting paper on the surface.

By drizzling a thin stream of the mixture on top, we created lacy, three-dimensional looks.

This looked like a bowl of spaghetti when we were done.

A pointed knife became a fine-haired paint brush.

Though the art we created was ephemeral, like a cloud formation or an Andy Goldsworthy arrangement of leaves and flowers in a stream, there was a sense of creative freedom in the impermanence. And at the end, unlike during some painting sessions, the mess cleaned up easily with water.

We never did get to make the polymer balls, a science project of its own. But, as sure as Newton's laws of motion hold true, we will.

Football (Part I) The Carolina Panthers NFL team has announced that it is tweaking its logo to make its panther look more aggressive and contemporary. The trend in sports animal logos has been to make the creatures more fierce, usually with bared teeth and wild eyes. The changes in this logo are so subtle that they test one's powers of observation.

See if you can identify the changes in the Panthers' logo. The old one is on top.

In our relationship with panthers, of course, humans are probably the ones who should be portrayed as wild eyed and aggressive. The "contemporary" reality for most types of big cats is that they're disappearing.

Bil Gilbert (1927-2012)

On January 27 the world lost a wonderful writer and nature lost an irreplaceable voice. My former Sports Illustrated colleague Bil Gilbert died at age 84, leaving behind many great friends and memories (see my own friend Bob Sullivan's personal reminiscence: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20120130/bil-gilbert/index.html) as well as a substantial journalistic legacy: from books such as Our Nature and How Animals Communicate to more than 400 magazine pieces for SI and Smithsonian. The Washington Post called him "our best full-time environmental journalist." If you search the SI Vault for past stories, you'll come across pieces that reflect how environmentally minded SI used to be. For example, one of Bil's 1971 pieces was headlined WHO SEZ-Z-Z-Z-Z MAN IS THE DOMINANT SPECIES? CERTAINLY NOT THE WORLD'S 800,000 DIFFERENT KINDS OF INSECTS. DINING WITH GUSTO ON THE POOR OUTNUMBERED HUMAN AND LAUGHING AT HIS POISONS, THE BUGS PREPARE FOR THEIR FINEST HOUR—THE SUMMER, WHEN MANKIND MOVES OUTDOORS. In that age of a very different SI, Bil wrote about Tasmanian devils and disastrous Secretary of the Interior James Watt, and also did a 1973 SI cover story billed WOMEN ARE GETTING A RAW DEAL that had a powerful impact on the growth of women's sports.

In addition to Bob Sullivan's fine tribute, you might also read this one in, of all things, a newsletter devoted to track and field's decathlon event. It too speaks of the wide range of people Bil touched in his life: http://decathlonusa.typepad.com/files/volumexxxviinumber4january42012-1.pdf

But you'd be best served by finding one of Bil's pieces, or books, and enjoying the man himself.

Answers to the Last Puzzers

1) There are about 30,000 quills on an adult porcupine.

2) Light travels from the Moon to the Earth in just over one second.

3) It is true that the word halcyon, meaning a peaceful, happy period, comes from the Greek word for a kingfisher bird, which in Greek mythology was given the power to calm the weather and the seas while it laid its eggs.

Today's Puzzler

1) What is the highest altitude ever reliably recorded for migrating butterflies?

a) 5,000 feet
b) 14,000 feet
c) 19,000 feet

2) Why was the shrub below given the name serviceberry?

a) Because it blossoms at a time when the ground has thawed enough to allow burial services b) Because its blossoms were commonly used on trays in tea services c) Because sprigs of it were given to soldiers for good luck when they were sent overseas

Pamelia and I took a break from the Notebook nuttiness by visiting a teenage naturalist at her family's small farm in Southwest Harbor. We crossed a field that that was jumpin' with crickets and grasshoppers. Win a free Bug Bite chocolate if you can… — Pamelia and I took a break from the Notebook nuttiness by visiting a teenage naturalist at her family's small farm in Southwest Harbor. We crossed a field that that was jumpin' with crickets and grasshoppers. Win a free Bug Bite chocolate if you can identify this beautiful specimen.

Quite a Week, Grasshopper

August 14, 2011

Let's see, where to start?

It has been a memorably busy week at The Naturalist's Notebook, which has been filled with athletes, naturalists, artists, honey-tasters, puzzle-solving kids, therapy dogs, visitors from at least four countries (France, Chile, Canada and England) and, alas, a grim-faced courier from the Maine Department of Transportation. More on that later.

Perhaps I'll start with the athletes. Two exceptional ones stopped in. One was Jessie Stone, a member of the national whitewater kayaking team, fresh off the world championships in Germany. As if world-class paddling weren't enough to keep her busy, she is also a doctor who founded and runs a medical clinic in Uganda, where she saves lives with her work protecting residents from malaria and other diseases (check out http://www.softpowerhealth.org/home.htm. ).

Here's Jessie in action. When in Africa she often trains in a whitewater section of the Nile.

A few days after Jessie's visit we greeted the Notebook's first-ever Olympian, runner Lynn Jennings.

Lynn was a member of the 1988, 1992 and 1996 U.S. teams and in '92 became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in a distance track event (a bronze at 10,000 meters). She also won three world cross-country titles, a feat no other U.S. runner (male or female) has matched.

While seeing Jessie wasn't a total surprise (she spends parts of her summers in Seal Harbor and is a friend of the Notebook), having Lynn walk in the door was utterly unexpected—and felicitous. I had covered Lynn as a writer for Sports Illustrated and found her immensely likeable, smart and down-to-Earth. We included her in a set of athlete trading cards we put in the magazine when I was the editor of Sports Illustrated For Kids. She looked familiar to me when she walked in the door this week, but I hadn't seen her in two decades. Neither of us made the connection until she recognized my name on a sign.

Lynn's trading card from my days at Sports Illustrated For Kids.

These days Lynn splits her time between Oregon and Vermont, working as a running director and competing as a single sculler. She drives back and forth across the country with her dog, Towhee, riding shotgun and her 24-foot scull atop her car. She and Towhee do a lot of trail running together, but she leaves him ashore when she climbs into her scull. She's currently training to compete in this fall's Head of the Charles regatta in Boston.

Lynn named her dog Towhee because his colors match those of the spotted towhees she sees in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives for much of the year.

Lynn is something of an amateur naturalist who has a great ear for bird songs.

As good fortune would have it, she was about to head up to a hand-built cabin in the hills of western Maine to visit Bernd Heinrich, the renowned biologist/naturalist/author whose books on nature and natural history are among our most popular titles at the Notebook. Bernd is also an accomplished ultramarathon runner, so he and Lynn share more than one passion.

Several days later Lynn shared with me her account of visiting Bernd. I'm excerpting it below. I'll pick up the story as she is nearing his cabin:

"With Towhee aboard, I followed [Bernd's driving] directions. When I saw the ancient truck with the cracked windshield (apparently it hasn't moved in 15 years) on the side of the road with his red pickup truck near it, I knew I was in the right place.

"Towhee and I trekked up the rocky hillside and saw him just ahead on the trail. He'd come looking for me (took longer to travel from way Downeast Maine than I had figured) and we proceeded to have a most fascinating multi-hour social. Among other things, I told him all about the Vaux's Swifts [small insect-eating birds] who come to Portland every September and showed him my iPhone iBird Explorer Plus, which fascinated him. The ability to listen to and compare various bird songs had him utterly focused on how to use the iPhone and the app. He'd never seen such a thing before and took copious notes on not only what he was learning but also about the Vaux's Swifts. He showed me all sorts of ongoing projects concerning a raven he is following and observing and other such things, including his latest book project.[CLICK BELOW FOR COOL 1-MINUTE VIDEO OF VAUX'S SWIFTS SWARMING AND ROOSTING IN OREGON]

Bernd's book on the intelligence of ravens is just one of his many fascinating works.

"He showed me his two cabins, his beginning sugarbush and the beetle he's kept and has been observing. He's got 400 acres and his home is cozy, beautiful with exposed birch trees and other beautiful parts of trees integrated into the interior. He loved Towhee and threw his head back and laughed when I asked him if he'd ever pet a towhee bird before.

"He's as old school as they come and he answers deeply and with great care about how he turns notes into one of his famed books and about the entire writing process. It was a conversation that drew from running as well. The act of writing and creating is not so different from the act of running and creating. Creating chapters and creating races and turning each into either a book or a racing career are part and parcel.

"It was a most companionable afternoon and it was hard to say goodbye at 6 p.m. He gave me a handful of blueberries and Towhee and I trekked through the grassy meadow and headed back down the hill and on to Vermont. As I walked away, he said, 'I'll be inviting you back again.'"

The Monoprint Workshop
Two other Notebook guests this week were Cynthia Gallagher and Roni Henning, a pair of highly accomplished New York-based artists who put on a day-long workshop on drawing and water-based, non-toxic monoprints. Cynthia teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan and Whitney Museums. Roni is a master printmaker who has worked with the likes of Andy Worhol and Red Grooms and has been a pioneer in the field of environmentally-friendly, non-toxic printing. Here are just a few shots from the workshop:

I wasn't able to take the workshop myself, so I'm not going to explain how it all works—though it was fun to watch. To learn more about water-based monoprinting, go to this youtube video of Roni demonstrating it on television:

This striking monoprint had the look of birch bark.

Just a portion of the work created by our eight artists and displayed on the Notebook deck.

Update on Our Sweet 16 Honey-Tasting Tournament

Honeybees in action at Pam and Emma Walsh's Mount Desert Island apiary.

For those of you who haven't been following our third annual Sweet 16 event on Facebook, here's a quick recap of the first four matches and the vote totals:
Maine Blueberry 21, Washington State Fireweed 15. Fireweed, the 2009 champion, has been struggling for two seasons; Blueberry advanced to the quarterfinals and has Final Four potential.
Italian Sunflower 34, Arizona Mesquite 26The Sweet 16's first international honey could be a champion; this week's showdown with Maine Blueberry could be one of the best matches of the tournament.
Maryland Bamboo (actually Japanese Knotweed) 25, Pennsylvania Alfalfa 24. The emotional wreckage of Pa. Alfalfa fans was still on display a day after this titanic battle. "That was the best honey I'd ever tasted! Ever!" said one despairing Alfalfa-ite. The Maryland entrant, our first invasive-species honey, is darker than most competitors and carries a peppery kick. It seems a long-shot to reach the final, but then again, like Japanese knotweed plants, it could be hard to eradicate.
California Eucalypus 31, Colorado Sweet Clover 23As with the knotweed and alfalfa, these two honeys polarized voters. The looming quarterfinal between Maryland and California could be as nasty as an East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry.

By the way, I heard from a Midwestern beekeeper this week pointing out that his/her region of the country was unrepresented in this year's Sweet 16. A jar of Prairie Wildflower arrived a few days later from Illinois. I admire the lobbying effort. Prairie Wildflower may well join the field for 2012.

Spider Week
I could post a whole gallery of the spiders we're seen lately outside either the Notebook or our house. The one below intrigued me because it was white (except for a red stripe) and was attached to our white car—a near-perfect camouflage job. My research indicates that it might be an Enoplognatha ovata, otherwise known as a Candystripe or Polymorphic spider. Any of you know for sure?

If this is a Candystripe spider, its siblings might range in color from white to yellow to green—but always with that red patch.

The Seal Harbor Detour
It's virtually never good to receive a notice from the government. The missive we received on Tuesday from the Maine State Department of Transportation informed us that because of the reconstruction of a tiny bridge, traffic will be detoured around the village of Seal Harbor from August 29 until late fall. That means for the final seven weeks of our season, we won't be getting any drive-by visitors. Not good. This will be a challenge.

Four Coming Events

Don't miss our Aug. 25 talk on Jane Goodall's recent work and the latest on protecting chimpanzees.

These are in addition to Kathy Coe's four-day-a-week art workshops and our Wednesday morning Earth News sessions for kids:
1) Saturday, Aug. 20 (starting at 10 a.m.): Come see a 25-foot traveling greenhouse on wheels (powered by recycled vegetable oil) and learn the secrets of environmentally-friendly, high-yield gardening from the young experts at the non-profit Compass Green.
2) Also Saturday, Aug. 20 (3-5 p.m.): Find out the science and history of gemstones and meet Portland jewelry artist Nance Trueworthy, whose beautiful gemstone necklaces will be on sale for 20% off.
3) Wednesday, August 17 and Thursday, August 18 (2-3 p.m. each day): Sunprint-making workshop for kids, run by 8-year-old Sarah Knox and her assistant, Haley Harwood.
4) Thursday, August 25: Jane Goodall Day at the Notebook, culminating with a talk about Jane and the latest efforts to protect chimpanzees, by Lilian Pintea of the Jane Goodall Institute.

Are You Listening?
I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but here it is: a short, interesting TED.com talk that is...well, worth listening to.

Answer to the Last Puzzler:
If you take the word AUTHOR, add one letter and rearrange all of the letters, you can spell the name of a famous naturalist author—THOREAU.

Today's Puzzler:
What is the heaviest flying bird in the world? And roughly how much does it weigh?

Kids and teens will conduct on-camera interviews, write stories and learn how to think like reporters.

New Summer Program: Earth News for Kids

June 3, 2011

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Those questions are the screwdrivers and wrenches and Swiss Army knives in a reporter's tool kit. They are among the most versatile, valuable tools on the planet. A journalist can use them to cut or pry open the answers to nearly everything.

So can a scientist, a naturalist, an anything-ist...and most certainly a kid.

With that in mind—and in the belief that kids and teens might enjoy standing in front of a camera pretending to be a news reporter—The Naturalist's Notebook is launching a fun, free summer program we're calling Earth News.

Anyone between the ages of 8 and 17 can sign up for the Earth News team, which will meet at The Naturalist's Notebook one morning a week starting in the first week of July and continuing through August (additional days and hours may be added as needed). Drawing on my background as a writer and editor at Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated For Kids, and also on the talents of College of the Atlantic students Julie Olbrantz, Eli Mellen and Haley Harwood, we will help team members develop their skills at questioning, thinking, writing, photographing, blogging and on-camera interviewing. The team will produce a newsletter and will conduct "press conferences" with VIPs (very interesting people) from nature, science, art and other fields.

We've been creating our own universe lately with paint brushes and imagination.

We'll do fun, brain-exercising activities such as playing 20 questions, testing (non-video) games to do reviews of them, and taking turns being the Wacky Weatherman. Every team member will choose one prominent person in the world, figure out how to contact him or her (a basic job of any reporter), and try to get that person to answer a few interview questions by mail or e-mail.

Though we hope team members will come each week all summer, we realize that some kids and teens visit the area only for a week or two. They'll be able to take part while they're up here.

Do you know someone who might enjoy this? Do you have questions about how it will work? Are you eager to sign up?

Just ask.

Answer to the Last Puzzler:

Match the state to its state bird:
Texas—mockingbird
West Virginia—Northern cardinal
New Hampshire—purple finch
Pennsylvania—ruffed grouse

Today's Puzzler:
Let's try some more. Match the state to its state insect:
1) Connecticut
2) Maine
3) Delaware
4) Pennsylvania

a) honeybee
b) firefly
c) ladybug
d) praying mantis

This isn't a quiz, but Pamelia's brother Scott sent along some quirky number facts:
1) This year, July will have five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. This happens only once every 823 years.
2) This year we will or already have seen these dates: 1/1/11 1/11/11 11/1/11 and 11/11/11
3) This year, if you take the last two digits of your birth year and add the age will be by the end of December, the answer should be 111.

Birthdays:
Walt Whitman, the New York-born poet most famous for his brilliant collection Leaves of Grass, would have turned 192 years old on Tuesday. (He looks almost that old in his later-life photos.) Whitman was, you may recall, a journalist; he worked for several newspapers, including the Brooklyn Eagle (of which he was the editor), and the Long-Islander (which he founded). The title of his master work has nothing to do with nature but is instead a term of self-deprecation: In his day publishers used the word leaves to refer to printed pages and grass to describe literary works of little or no value.

James Hutton, the Scottish-born naturalist, scientist and experimental farmer who's known as the father of modern geology, would have been 285 today. Among his many contributions was the theory that the Earth was far older than just a few thousand years, as people thought at the time, and that the planet had a very hot center that helped form various types of rocks; in his day the popular belief was that all rocks had crystalized from minerals in the ocean and were spread around the world in a great flood.

Dennis Gabor, the Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian-born engineer who invented the three-dimensional light projection we call a hologram, would have been 111 on Sunday. Gabor, who was Jewish, was working in Germany in the 1930s when he fled the Nazis and moved to England, where he did his historic work using laser light.

To honor Dennis Gabor's birthday last year, engineers at Google created a holographic version of the company's logo.

This new book will raise your math knowledge to a new power.

Numbers, Doodling and Football

January 20, 2011

Numbers and mathematics underpin the natural world, its forces, and—perhaps most important during the NFL playoffs—the games played by us sports-minded homo sapiens. My eminent Sports Illustrated colleague Jon Wertheim has written a great new book with equally eminent mathematician Tobias Moskowitz of the University of Chicago business school that will change the way you look at sports and enhance your understanding of numbers, math and probability.

An excerpt ran in the Jan. 17 issue of SI on the subject of home field advantage. Why might the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers have the edge in this weekend's games against the Green Bay Packers and New York Jets? Read and find out. If you're eager to get the book and don't pick it up sooner, we'll have it for sale at The Naturalist's Notebook this summer as part of our look at nature's numbers.

A smart, enthusiastic, funny young woman named Vi Hart has gotten media attention this week for her highly creative efforts—and youtube videos—on how doodling can make math more fun and accessible. It will make you want to pull out a pencil and paper. Take the time to check this out: http://scienceblogs.com/deanscorner/2011/01/doodling_in_math_class_sir_isa.php

An Animal Puzzle to Test Your Noodle
This is a classic one. Helpful hint: The answer is a whole number, not a fraction: Haretown and Tortoiseville are 55 miles apart. A hare travels at 9 miles per hour from Haretown to Tortoiseville, while a tortoise travels at 2 miles per hour from Tortoiseville to Haretown.

If both set out at the same time, how many miles will the hare have to travel before meeting the tortoise en route? (Answer will be revealed in the next blog post.)

Today's Birthdays:
Joy Adamson, the Czech-born naturalist, artist and author who wrote Born Free, would have been 111 years old today. She's most famous for having raised Elsa, a lioness cub who was orphaned when Adamson's husband, a game warden in Kenya, shot its mother when charged by the animal. It's been many years since I've watched the Academy Award-winning movie Born Free. This week might be a good time to see if it's available on Netflix or elsewhere.

Andre-Marie Ampere, the French physicist who discovered how electricity and magnetism interact—and thus invented the science of electromagnetism—would have been 236 today. His discovery was the first step in our finding out that the Earth itself is a giant, metal-core electromagnet, with a magnetic field that birds (and probably certain other animals) can sense. Despite family tragedy (his father, a justice of the peace, was executed during the French Revolution, when Andre was a teenager), Ampere advanced our knowledge so much that a unit of electricity known as the ampere, or amp, is named for him.

DNA, DMC and UFO?

May 14, 2010

Not to shill for my own magazine, but this week's Sports Illustrated has a superb article by David Epstein on the genetic component of athletic performance (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1169440/index.htm). I wish even non-sports fans would read it because—beyond offering a fascinating look at the search for so-called sports genes—it's a thought-provoking take on human history and the absurdity of classifying people by the color of their skin. You will be seeing a lot more of David's work; he is one of the most talented young journalists I've worked with in three decades at SI, and his aptitude for both scientific writing and investigative reporting will distinguish him in the years ahead.

If nothing else, by reading her story you'll find out why we have larger butts and less body hair than apes. Generally speaking.

Pamelia's own DNA-analysis results came back this week. As previously noted, we're both taking part in a global study of genetics and human migration that we will highlight this summer at The Naturalist's Notebook. I can't leak the results before the Notebook opens, but I will give you this much of a teaser: Her distant ancestors migrated through what are now Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Chechnya. I hope she isn't put on a terror watch list. Seriously, though, it's mind-expanding to trace your lineage back not 100 or 200 years but 50,000 years.

More Wacky World Signs...

In a follow-up to yesterday's item, thanks to Margaret and Harriet for passing on their photo of this sign they saw in Florence last week. Whether you rock to the Aerosmith original or the Run-DMC remake, you probably ain't walkin' this way.

And finally... ...can you see a silvery object hovering in the sky in this photo?

Pamelia came up with a few low-tide treasures, if no alien ones.

This afternoon a neighbor called to tell us to go outside our house and look up at the strange silver thing—a weather balloon? a UFO?—that was floating but not moving. “You probably think we're crazy," she said. Actually, it was such a gorgeous day that only staying inside was crazy. We scanned the skies with binoculars and saw nothing except this incredibly beautiful seascape. And by looking down rather than up, Pamelia found a great mussel shell.

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