Einstein's Theory of Relativity---the parts of interest to a librarian

 One of our wonderful physics teachers spoke with a family who donated a limited edition of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's in the original German, and it came in plastic wrapping. 

While the family told us that they wanted us to share with our students, we were still hesitant to open the wrap and remove it from mint condition. Yesterday was the day.



The students were suitably impressed.

Environmental Events - Free and Fun

Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben is speaking at Eckerd College at 7:30 on Wednesday, October 12. It’s amazing the number of free resources available if you live near a college. Take advantage of it! http://www.eckerd.edu/news/index.php?f=detail&id=3133

I’ve had the opportunity to hear him speak twice before, including once at a conference this summer where he spoke exclusively to independent school teachers about making their schools more sustainable. He's a visionary in the field, and he might change your way of interacting with the world around you.

One of the interesting things he said is that people have 10 times more interactions with other people at farmers’ markets compared with grocery stores. The Bradenton Farmers’ Market has now returned for the winter, and last Saturday I spoke with 5 people that I know for four different reasons…and none of those reasons was Saint Stephen’s, which is my largest social circle in the area. As I listened to potential customers ask a farmer about mache (a type of lettuce), I knew that his answers would have a better success rate at getting people to try the item compared with reading about it online. There’s something about the tactile nature of a farmers' market that encourages people to experiment with their eating.

This ties directly into my support for Geraldson’s Community Farm. I like knowing the farmers, watching the plants shoot up from the ground, and having my dinners depend on the weather from the previous months. If you want to learn more about the farm or the types of vegetables you can grow in Florida, you should come to Geraldson’s Open House this weekend from 9am-2pm. There will be games for the children, farm tours for adults, and you’ll leave with your own seedling to plant at home. http://geraldsoncommunityfarm.org/documents/OpenHouseFlyer11.pdf

Enjoy the harvest season in Florida. Eat locally, and take part!

Blogs, Lessons, and a Science Joke

We had a wonderful dinner party at Susan and Gilly's house tonight to celebrate the work we've done at the Institute. Every time I eat local foods, I'm reminded of how much I enjoy eating seasonally. Others finally had the opportunity to try Monterey salmon and sardines, and I heard lots of positive feedback. We also shared our preliminary ideas for lesson plans based on what we've learned in the program. I'm impressed by the variety of ideas presented and also how much value the English teachers found in the science we've learned over the past week and a half. It totally matches with the Atlas ideal of interdisciplinary learning.


While I entered the program thinking about ways to connect literature and agriculture, and while I'd still like to do this, (any interested teachers who want to work with me and Geraldson's Community Farm?) I decided Wednesday night that I'd at least ask about using what I learned from my blog. So, if I now have new readers in the other Steinbeck Scholars, welcome. Feel free to make comments, and know that the original intended audience for this blog was my school and home community, so if things seem to be taken out of context, that's why. I'm glad that I was given the opportunity to meet you, and I hope we'll continue to share ideas in the future. Other readers, check back to http://www.steinbeckinstitute.org/ on August 31 for some creative lesson plans in English, writing, social studies, earth sciences, and Chemistry. Over the next few weeks, I'll be coming up with some guidelines about creating blogs of place, so writers aren't just writing about themselves. If you have any comments on what you like to see in blogs, let me know.

Since Izmir has shared her love of cheezbergers with those who've been following the whole time, I thought she'd enjoy this photo about half as much as I did. I found it on a student's door at Hopkins Marine Station. You'll make a science geek out of me yet, provided the science is basic and the joke is a pun.


Off to the Steinbeck Festival. A final day of Steinbeck conversations and lectures, this time with a larger group of aficionados.

Wow! Squid edition.

Speaking as the girl who was given permission to act as "recorder" during Biology dissections in high school, today's squid dissection was really cool! I can't deny that I turned away a few times and inadvertently shrieked at others, but it was a great experience. Perhaps this is because we had a great teacher, a Stanford graduate student who also blogs daily about her love of cephalopods. Check it out at http://www.science20.com/squid_day. Short and fun tidbits for those of us drawn to invertebrates.

We also learned (from her) that our program's cosponsor William Gilly, who's been leading many of our science sessions, and who put up with about a million of my geography/biology questions on our Sunday drive from Hearst Castle, is a blogger for Scientific American. There's no shying away from science here. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/expeditions/2011/06/20/squid-studies-changing-seas-and-shrinking-squid/ I have a good feeling that Seth and I will be learning a lot more about cephalopods in the coming months. Also, if you're looking for a free Humboldt squid to dissect with your class, here's the link for you. http://gilly.stanford.edu/outreach.html. We talked about uses in Art and English. If you want a squid, I can hlep you come up with a project.

So you probably know what's coming for you. 10 things I've learned about cephalopods, mainly Humboldt squids, in the past few days. Hold on to your hat.

1. Squid are all muscle. This makes them about the best possible animal for a snack. They're pursued by everything from dolphins to albatross. Also, when you eat calamari, you're usually eating the mantle (head), cut into rings with the organs cut out from the center. However, the entire squid is edible.

2. The hardest part of a squid is it's beak, which is comparable to a bird's beak. It's made of chiton, and it's very strong. Gilly told us about being bitten by a squid while trying to place a camera on it (a story in itself, I'm sure). He didn't feel the bite because of possible numbing agents in the squid, but he needed 15 stitches. He realized the severity of what was happening when he saw the squid on his arm and red blood on the boat deck. Squid have blue blood.

(Squid beak in center circle)

3. Humboldt squid are "reproductive machines." They only live a few years, but their reproductive systems are bigger than their circulatory systems. The female's egg mass is the size of a small car! The male lays spermatophore packages around the female's beak, but no one has actually ever observed their mating rituals.

4. You can't tell the sex of a squid until you cut into it's mantle. Another thing you learn from cutting one open is its approximate age. The tiny (breadcrumb-sized) statolith works like a "black box," recording information about the squid's age and the water temperature during its development. It also helps the squid maintain equilibrium in the water.

(Squid heart. I believe that this is the systemic heart, but it could be a brachial heart. Don't quote me on it.)

5. Squid are some of the only animals on earth to move using jet propulsion. They're only methods of defense are their ink and their escape abilities. They can easily adjust the water flow (yes, I'm simplifying this dramatically) to swim in any direction.

6. Squid ink is edible. Squid can also change the patterns of their inking. They can mix it with water to create a general smokescreen effect. Or they can mix it with mucus and create a pseudomorph, a shape that looks like a tasty treat. That way they can escape while the predator goes after their ink.

(Ink pouch)

7. You cannot keep Humboldt squid in captivity. Because they are all muscle and live in the ocean where they'd never run into a hard surface, they bang themselves repeatedly into the glass until their mantles hemorrhage. Researchers are trying to study them in their natural habitats.

8. Squid have both chromatophores and photophores. The photophores on the ends of the tentacles look like little drops of light and draw fish in for the squid to eat. There's still a lot of research being done on chromatophores, but know that the entire squid can change color instantly. In one instance, when a camera was placed on a squid, it varied it's color pattern to match the frequency. To see this camouflage ability in action, you can look here. http://youtu.be/ZbNsMVQzca0

9. Humboldt squid have eight arms and two (longer) tentacles. The tentacles have sharp teeth, and can quickly grasp the food. Arms work to keep food from escaping.

(Measuring Squid)

10. When measuring squid, you should measure just the mantle. If you hear reports of squid lengths that seem impossibly long, see if the person is measuring by stretching out the elastic tentacle. This is what some people do to exaggerate the size of their finds.

I have one more day to ask questions. Anything you want to know? I also have the name of a cuttlefish breeder if you're interested in helping replenish the supply.

(NOAA research boat for the afternoon exhibition. Whales, plankton, and for some, seasickness.)

Thoughts on Sea of Cortez and Aquariums, Part 1

(View of aquarium before tidepooling. You can see more clearly here that the aquarium is a renovated cannery.)

Yesterday the group met with Craig Strang, who helps run the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. He's been instrumental in introducing the discussion on ocean literacy in the k-12 classroom. He strongly believes that every students needs to be taught basic facts about the ocean to to understand the ways in which the earth (including humans) are affected by the ocean and the effects the ocean has on the earth (including humans.) More information about this can be found on the Ocean Literacy site http://oceanliteracy.wp2.coexploration.org/. This has been a longtime collaboration with Lawrence Hall of Science, NOAA, the College of Exploration, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation.

(Manmade tide pool behind the aquarium that directly connects to the bay. They also host a scuba program there. )

Because we were visiting the aquarium for a behind the scenes tour and because Craig recommended it, I read an article by emeritus professor Todd Newberry on that compared aquariums and zoos. It also got into some interesting philosophical content. Here's an excerpt.

First, let's recognize the aquarium for what it really is. What people encounter there is not nature itself, nor the sea in miniature. It is a series of stage sets and show windows. The more we try to pretend that we are looking through a porthole in Captain Nemo's submarine, the more we see a fish tank. The ecology is compressed, confined. We are at a show. The action on the stage is a tightly controlled representation—a selective "re-presentation"—of nature. The aquarium's exhibits have been filtered through multiple human decisions on the way to creating an illusion. An exhibit succeeds, I think, when we participate in its illusion, as we might in that of a magic show or a play. The tired phrase for this-the one about the suspension of disbelief-implies accurately that an aquarium is really a theater. Even its stage is an illusion: in the aquarium, the surface of the sea has been rotated from horizontal to vertical and, like the biblical waters, parted so we can walk dry-shod through darkened depths.

Like the actors in our human plays, the fish in an aquarium, though doubtless the real thing, are in a kind of ecological disguise. In these artificially simplified habitats, they must lead simpler lives than they would in the wild. But like the human actors who make us see some of life's truths with unnatural clarity, the fishy ones can help us focus on just a few events and relationships out of the welter of them that we would encounter if we were in uncontrived nature. Notice (but for now notice only) how these anchovies school tightly together, but those clown fish keep their distance from one another. Watch (but for now watch only) how these jellyfish drive their way downward while those drift through their descent. The illusions of the tanks, like those of the theater, do not fake, they portray. As a visitor, my opportunity is to see through the aquarium's managed portrayals, into the sometimes unmanageable complexities of life in the sea.

An aquarium, then, is a theater. Alive as its exhibits may be, it can be compared, as well, to that other extremely filtered place, a museum. Even in an aquarium with giant exhibits, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Aquarium of the Pacific, we are in a museum with fish tanks instead of dioramas or paintings along its walls. And after a while, many aquariums, like many museums, produce the same behavior in most people, that of just moving on. There is so much to see! It is too big a meal. After an hour or two, I almost expect a docent disguised as a waiter to come up and ask me, "Are you still working on it?" And so this habit of trudging on, moving along. I call it "glance and go."

The group was challenged to each find an exhibit and sit quietly for 5 minutes. I chose to look at the bubble jellies, and I probably had 40 families pass by (it's a busy aquarium), and even when children wanted to linger, parents pushed them forward. More to see. Bigger animals. Animals with faces. Don't waste photos on jellyfish. When children asked questions, parents didn't bother the read the materials or even try to answer. No modeling curiosity and research here. But it wasn't all that dramatic. The jellies were beautiful. I looked for patterns in swimming, size and breathing speed connections, spot and texture differentiations, and thought about how I need to be reminded to slow down.

(First time a contained environment has been able to grow kelp. Top of the exhibit.)(Same exhibit from the general visitor view.)

You can read the entire article here. It's not too long, and it might make you reconsider how you visit zoos, aquariums, and museums.
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/newberry_su04.html

(Back of one of the exhibits with easy access for animal care.)

This is part one because a long related Steinbeck quotation will be posted tomorrow. We're using the Sea of Cortez as key to understanding the philosophy and themes in all of Steinbeck's books.

Tide Pooling

(Look at my fun waterproof boots.)

If you ever are offered the opportunity to muck about in a tide pool, I recommend it. We spent over two hours traipsing around, poking under rocks, and lifting up kelp deposits. Susan was kind enough to loan me a pair of waterproof boots, and I stayed dry and warm even while wading through knee-deep water. I also saw the best side of the other teachers-helping each other find the critters we were searching for, holding out hands as a stabilizing force for people whose feet were less sure, and modeling curiosity about all of the creatures we came across. There was at least one abalone, a few fish, a fair number of crustaceans, an overwhelming number of anemones, and millions of jelly-type animals that we didn't always recognize on our own as alive.

(That large gray object on the right is actually a colonial tunicate. I reached my hand in the water to use it to poke the jelly substance immediately to the left, and it was soft. Just about everything you see here is alive.)

(This octopus shouldn't have been in the intertidal. It's now in Gilly's cephalopod lab.)

Steinbeck and Rickett's used to go collecting in the tide pools around Monterey. Reading my post about writing and Cannery Row, you might also remember the the metaphor of a tide pool is the essential metaphor for Cannery Row throughout the book. At our lecture preparing us for the experience, the scientist discussed the importance of looking slowly at details instead of surveying the vistas. This goes against human inclinations, and he challenged us to spend 5 minutes at two different times staring quietly at the same tide pool. The animals living in the pools can feel our approach, sense our shadows, and taste our presence in the water. They need time to adjust to us, and we notice more as we watch the interactions that unfold under the water.

(Bird rock that's appeared in the distance in many of my photos. 6am was the low-low tide of the day.)

(You can see better here how far out we walked.)

Tidepools are also a metaphor for Steinbeck's writing on a larger scale. He cared about symbiosis in communities, and the ways that different species rely on each other. Both he and Ricketts challenged the status quo of organizing (sterilized preserved) animals by phylum, categorization and instead found value in observing living communities. You can see this theme of community design and survivability in all of his fiction and nonfiction writings. Steinbeck observed communities, human and aquatic, in their natural environments, and he let their actions speak for themselves.

Sea Life of the Monterey Bay

Oh Seth, you had to ask to learn more about sea life in the region. Today started the biology section of the institute. Little did you know that I'm way over my head in marine biology terms at the moment. Things like the differences between "lottia digitalis" and "siphonaria maura," for example. Or looking at the effects of "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" on pelagic communities. We're working with a holistic biologist** from Stanford, the director of Hopkins Research Station, and a senior scientist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Understanding that the majority of teachers aren't science teachers, we got some interesting comparisons such as acrea based on "universality of niche" to Tom Joad's final speech in The Grapes of Wrath, and a line of poetry to the jelly(family) food web.

Here are two creatures from the Monterey Bay that I can almost guarantee will be new to most of you.

The first is the vampyrus (vam-pyro-tooth-us) infernalis. Even though of you without a strong Latin background might notice some similarities to modern English words.



It's a "living fossil." When it's threatened, it assumes a pineapple posture to protect it's mantle by placing its arms in a protective posture. As if that weren't enough, it also squirts bio-luminescent particles from its arm tips that create an enormous and distracting display around itself.



The second was only discovered in 2007, and it was given the name "chetopterus pugaporcinus." You're welcome to translate, but I'll hint that the name is based on the appearance.




In the last 15 years, Humboldt squid have shown up in great numbers from more tropical climates due to rising water temperatures, reduced oxygen in the water, reduced competition, and reduced predation. They're depleting the hake fish population. I don't know if they're considered an invasive species, but the researcher used the word "invasion" to describe what's happened.




It's late, and we need to read The Tragedy of the Commons and several responses for our morning sessions tomorrow. Feel free (except Seth) to skip the next part. It's taken directly from my notes.

When European explorers arrived on the California coast in the 18th century, fish and wildlife were plentiful. Grizzly bears fought on the coast over sea life that washed up on the beaches, and condors ate from the sea as well. Between 1789-1811, 39,173 sea otter pelts were taken. Each pelt could be sold to the Chinese for 30 dollars at a time when 90 dollars bought you a house in San Diego. But, otters play an important role in the ecosystem. They protect sea kelp forests by eating sea urchins and abalone who eat kelp. Because the California waters are cold and sea otters lack blubber, every adult sea otter ate approximately twenty pounds of seafood each day. The kelp forests were devastated. This set a pattern where people hunted animals to extinction, altered the ecosystems, and found new animals to hunt. In order, they hunted otters, whales, seabirds, and abalone. (I'm not including the sardines and canning industry. I could.) Meanwhile, in the early 20th century, Julia Platt, Ph.D., fought against the pollution of the canning industries. She broke glass ceilings all over the world, and she even became mayor of the town of Pacific Grove when she found out she would have the power to create a marine conservation area and wildlife refuge if she did so. Onto the 1930s and sea otters were thought to be extinct. While building the Bixby Bridge on US1, a colony of 30-50 was discovered. Fishermen wanted to shoot them because they ate abalone, but some were moved to Monterey Bay. The otters liked the marine area, and soon the kelp forests began to rebound. With the kelp forests came more fish and with more fish came the seals. The seals brought tourists as well as the interest of Julie Packard (of Hewlett-Packard money) who helped conceive of and fund the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's one of the best research facilities for aquatics in this country, and it's also increased tourism to the area. (Tourism is now the second largest industry behind agriculture. There's more wildlife viewing than wildlife processing, and maintaining a healthy ocean has become part of the economic model.

*I'm pretty sure this is obvious, but I wanted to make sure people knew that these aren't my photos. :)
**Holistic biology is really interesting. It started for the non-science majors at Stanford because they were overwhelmed by the science focus of the school. It encourages students to examine systems and communities (as Ed Rickett's recommended) as an integrated whole.
***If you want to learn more, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has an excellent website at http://www.mbari.org/
****I saw my first two sea otters out in the bay this evening. They're just as cute as I expected. It was even better because it was a chance occurrence that I walked out back during the 5 minute break.