The last tomatoes of 2024

Tomatoes, garlic, peppers, parsley, oregano, basil and the several yardlong beans you see in the photo all came from my garden.

Books I read over the last year

 

First figs

 After three years, I had a small fig harvest. I have three fig plants that I planted in my yard. The one that is three years old produced ten delicious figs, five are shown below. I have a one-year old fig that I grew from a cutting, but it only produced a few figs and they are unlikely to ripen before its gets cold. My third fig in the ground is the largest, and it too is at least three years old. It is the tallest, over six feet, but it did not produce figs this year likely because it doesn't get enough sunlight. It is about time to winterize the figs so that they won't die back. All of these figs are the Chicago Hardy variety.

Ideological floorboards

Below, an excerpt from the book Godwin by Joseph O'Neill, from a review written by A.O. Scott in the NY Times:  "It’s also possible that reading Mark’s alternately diffident and combative first-person narration in “Godwin," Joseph O’Neill’s sharp and slippery new novel, will provoke a more intimate tremor of recognition, especially when he describes the intellectual milieu that formed him":

Netherlands Study Abroad - Summer 2023 (videos)

ENS and Geography students from UK attended this study abroad offerred through KIIS. Below is one of the food gardens maintained by Groengoed, an organization I coordinated with to allow for students and myself to volunteer to weed, hoe, plant and water. We worked at several gardens around the city over the course of our stay in Rotterdam. Students worked in groups of two to four, and we were often working alongside local residents. You can see some ENS students at the end of the video.

As part of the classes I designed, I arranged for all us to volunteer as docents at a Rooftop Rotterdam event. We were there an entire day on the rooftop of a mall in the Zuidplein neighborhood. These are annual events organized by Rotterdamse Dakendagen. Many thanks to this organization for working us into the event.

Another urban food garden where the students and I worked. This garden was on top of an old train station across from a high school. I hope my bean trellis stood the test of time. Talking to some of the other volunteers from Rotterdam while working was one of the highlights of my trip.

The Netherlands from one end to another is an evolving study in biogeomorphology. This is the view from a lookout in Meijendel, just a little ways outside of Den Hague. We rented bikes in the city and rode out this nature reserve. My Society, Resources and Climate class examined many of the water issues in the Netherlands, including how their water infrastructure is set up to balance demands for (dune-filtered) drinking water, coastal protection, and nature conservation.

ENS students on the bike ride to the dunes of Meijendel near Den Hague.

My favorite cafe on the trip. I only went their once. It's location will remain undisclosed.

On the day we arrived in Den Hague, a protest organized by Extinction Rebellion took place. The goal was to shut down the A12 roadway in order to call attention to government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. There were several thousand people present and in this video I am very much in the rear of the activity. Water cannons were being used to dislodge the protestors down closer to the roadway.

These are the protestors that initially stopped the traffic so that the main protest could take place at a short distance away.

Another one of my favorite days. My partner Laura and I took the train to Haarlem, rented bikes and rode to the beach with a stop to swim in a lake in the dunes. We spent part of the day in Haarlem and this the view from the bench where I happily did nothing on this Saturday morning

 

Netherlands Study Abroad - Summer 2023 (photos)

Volunteer work group at a rooftop food garden in Rotterdam. The gardens are run by Groengoed. Two of our students are in the middle on the back row. Our leader from Groengoed was the woman in the front row center. I am in the back with the hat. 

 

 

 

Water tower at the Meijendel dunes outside of Den Hague. 

Interdune lake in Meijendel dune reserve outside of Den Hague. River water is pumped into the interdune lakes after initial treatment. This water percolates through sand as a way to clean it further before being pumped and piped for drinking water. These dune drinking water sources are becoming increasingly brackish with sea level rise and some of these lake sources now require additional treatment.

Rooftop Rotterdam as my students enter the exhibit for the first time. This is where we volunteered. The work was to make sure that visitors stayed on the yellow path as they toured the street art distributed along the rooftop of this mall in Zuidplein.

The interdune lake where I swam on the bike ride out of Haarlem to the beach. I swam my first strokes here after breaking my arm in December 2022

I traveled on my own to see Marker Wadden, a collection of artificial islands undergoing assembly in the Markemeer, the large lake (its not ocean) north of Amsterdam. 

Marker Wadden on the south facing shore. The island's assembly is designed to take advantage of winds and currents to allow more natural deposition and assembly of the island. The large bird observatory is also still visible on the horizon to the left of the photo. H5N1's presence was noted in the frequent occurrence of dead birds along the trail and a worker whose job was to remove dead birds. I also met a group of biologists out sampling fish in the interior wetlands.

 

The Simpleton Manifesto

 

On keeping a singular vision

 

Pretend singly, William James

 

Comminuted fracture of the proximal humerus neck

In December 2023, I slipped on ice and broke my left humerus. A comminuted fracture of the proximal humerus neck. In other words, I broke my upper arm bone just below the ball that fits into the shoulder socket, and it broke into several pieces. There was some displacement of the humerus, but the displaced bone >mostly< went back into place due to gravity while my arm was positioned in the sling. There is still some impingement in my shoulder, but I have returned to swimming and can do most of what I could do before.

December 26, 2022

April 16, 2023