Backpacking Mount Rogers again

Last weekend, my friend N and I had planned to go on a backpacking adventure in western North Carolina, but the remnants of hurricane Sally pushed us north into Virginia instead. Thus I hiked my second loop of the summer around Mount Rogers in the Lewis Fork Wilderness Area. 

Things I learned: spontaneously purchasing that 20oF-rated Marmot sleeping bag the day before we headed out was a smart move; a one-person bivy (or as E calls it, "coffin tent") that you can't sit up inside is not ideal when you wake up to subfreezing temps and frozen condensation on your rain fly; and the unblazed Cliffside Trail is just as beautiful as the Pine Trail and the Crest Trail. And word to the wise: starting the loop on a Saturday is a good idea only if you like sharing the most congested parts of the trail with a hundred or so other people. We were glad we chose to camp a mile or two past Rhododendron Gap.

Mathemalchemy

This past February, I joined a group of artists, mathematicians, and mathematician-artists collaborating on a math-art installation with layer upon layer upon layer of mathematical and artistic thought, narrative, punning, and play. For me, during this summer of covid, it's been an opportunity both to get to know a bunch of really interesting, dedicated, talented, creative people and to explore new objets d'clay. I've prototyped herons and hagfish-inspired Fibonacci sea serpents for a Knotical scene, tortoise shells decorated with pentagonal and heptagonal tilings of the hyperbolic plane, and clay heads for an industrious feline baker of tessellating cookies, with more creatures coming soon. These seeds are stimulating adventures for me outside of the project too. The first heron prototypes, for example, flew off to the Sculpture in the Garden show at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, and successive generations rounded out a recent Claymakers Zoom class on wheel-thrown and altered birds and beasts.

The math-art project now has a website--mathemalchemy.org--and released a teaser trailer this past week. Check it out! 

Penguins meet Fibonacci serpent

Tessellating shell for Tess the tortoise

First batch of heads that looked more feline than
kangarooine or chipmunkine. Still working on it...

Juvenile wheel-thrown heron; the adults are taller and have metal legs.

Third time's the charm

In 2009, we returned from a sabbatical semester in Germany to find that almost all of our houseplants had perished. I put out a plea for cuttings on our neighborhood email list, and a neighbor responded. Among her gifts was an epiphyllum leaf. 

Over the next several years, the single leaf grew into an enormous scraggly plant. During the winter, it perches like a vulture atop a wardrobe in our living room. In the summer, it hangs out outside on the porch.

Two summers ago, I finally learned it likes half shade/half sun. It rewarded me by producing a single flower. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the flower until the morning after it had bloomed. Epiphyllum--also known as night-blooming cereus--blooms at night, and the flowers wilt at dawn. I vowed to pay more attention the next summer.

This summer, it rewarded me again by producing a single flower, and dagnabbit if I didn't notice the flower until the morning after it had bloomed. I vowed to pay more attention next summer.

And then, a few weeks after the second annual miss, we had a hit. The plant put out a second bud. I checked it every few days, then daily, then twice daily, and then it bloomed. We now understand why people host bloom-watching parties.

August 31

September 6

September 8

September 9

September 11

September 11

E made a time-lapse video

E's video captures ~8:30pm - midnight in 9 seconds:

 

The morning after

Quarantine Lunchbox (2020)

Backyard State U had a covid trainwreck last month. Who could have imagined that behavioral scientists and epidemiologists actually know what they're talking about?

E heeded the poem, but some of his bright-eyed bushy-tailed first-year suite-mates did not. (And who can blame them, really? We know that kids do all sorts of risky stuff when they're away from home for the first time.) A suite-mate tested positive for covid. 

Thus E spent two full weeks in quarantine, as required by BSU's overwhelmed Student Housing, waiting to find out if he had covid too. He tested negative ten days in, so was either barely symptomatic early on or never had it. As soon as E was sprung from confinement, S helped him move out of his quarantine dorm and then out of his regular dorm. E might not be on campus anymore, but hoo boy, he's certainly getting an education this year.

While hunkered down, E received two meals each day, delivered at the same time by Dining Services, providing him with a grand total of 14 memorable hummus-veggie wrap lunches and 14 functional dinners. E, a budding environmental engineer, set to work redeploying the cardstock lunch containers. He prototyped a lot of paper airplanes, but he also made some art. If you want to know what 14 days in quarantine looks like, check out the exhibit below.

E

Quarantine Lunchbox

2020

Cardstock boxes, glue, metal tin

9.5" x 3.75" x 2.25"

Private collection