As I have written about in the past, I currently work in an herbarium. For a very long time, I mounted botanical specimens. Now we are pretty caught up on that and I am delving into other tasks that surround collections. One of the things I work on fairly regularly is looking up current taxonomy.Continue reading “What’s In a Name??”
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Local names
An occasional series on local culture I spend a lot of time in the Baltimore area and recently I heard some commentary on WYPR (NPR Baltimore) regarding telephone culture of the past. My ears perked up because this was something I wrote about on my last Local Post which you can find here. The commentatorContinue reading “Local names”
Story Time with Mom
Not long ago, I was thinking about a short story my friend Claudia wrote about a train ride she took to see her son in Pittsburgh. The reason I was thinking about this story is because I remember reading it to my mother on a visit to her when she was living with my sister.Continue reading “Story Time with Mom”
50,000 and Counting
This is dedicated to my friend Penny, who I was hiking with when we stumbled upon the first Lady’s Slipper I ever saw. Thursday was a big day at the herbarium where I work. We, as a group, collected our 50,000th specimen: A Pink Lady’s Slipper. Dr. Jim Matthews, who is the founder of theContinue reading “50,000 and Counting”
Reduction Linocut Step by Step
Many years ago on a former blog I had a tutorial on how to do a reduction linocut. A reduction linocut, said to have been invented by Pablo Picasso as a means to economizing on linoleum, is when you use only one block to make a color print instead of the traditional one block perContinue reading “Reduction Linocut Step by Step”
World Atlas – my new pastime
I have always loved maps, especially very old maps and maps of odd things. Along with all of this is an interest in geography in a very broad sense – from land masses to the types of signs you see different places. So I figured it was about time that I owned a world atlasContinue reading “World Atlas – my new pastime”
Another Friend-Made Surprise
My dear friend Claudia has been very invested in making Tiny Houses and knows my love of such things. So here is one that Claudia made for me! The loft space is my studio. See more of her work here.
The Birds
I was going along in my sketchbooks happily drawing funny shaped houses and buildings and out of nowhere, birds crept onto the pages. These are very different from my Dirty Birds series that I did back in 2003/2004 when I was obsessed with, mainly, pigeons but other common urban birds as well. Clicking on anyContinue reading “The Birds”
Garden Sketches
Sorry if you are opening this post expecting a quaint garden scenes complete with water features, statues of St. Francis, and a rainbow of color but instead you are finding these: The great thing about sketchbooks for me is that I never know what is going to appear. For the top piece, which I willContinue reading “Garden Sketches”
Week Ending: March 4, 2022
Well this week was challenging so I am going to start off with something that I am very happy about and that is the salad of the week. Actually, it is not really the salad “of the week” in that I made another salad, a beet salad, which I have made several times but thisContinue reading “Week Ending: March 4, 2022”