Saturday, April 11th
We went up to Portland today to attend a performance of the Oregon Symphony. Before the performance we had dinner at the Heathman and then went early to the hall to hear an introductory talk by conductor Jun Märkl. He turned out to be a gentleman of the old school, a charming and informative speaker. After that we heard three pieces of French music. First came Omphale’s Spinning Wheel by Saint-Saëns followed by Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, and then, after the intermission, a performance of Suites I and II of Daphnis et Chloé. The highlight for us was the concerto, which featured guest artist Ingrid Fliter. She gave a wonderful performance and even if she hadn’t, her sparkly outfit alone would have made our visit worthwhile.
To avoid having to drive home in the late evening, we had arranged to stay the night across the river in Vancouver, Washington at the home of Jake and Maggie. We had checked in with J and M earlier in the afternoon. When we arrived, they were very, very excited to see us. In fact, we hadn’t seen that level of energy and enthusiasm in quite a while. Was it due to the fact that E and M are such extraordinarily interesting guests? Or did it have more to do with our hosts’ age, their species, and the possibility that we might be going to feed them?
When we returned to J and M’s place after the concert, the two were just as energetic as ever. The same level of activity continued well into the night. Finally, at around 3:00 AM, E gave them some more food, after which they immediately settled in to sleep with us.
Sunday, April 12th
After escaping the clutches of Maggie and Jake, we did a mall visit and then had lunch at a Thai restaurant before heading back to Corvallis. The food was delicious, but there was a fellow near us who was coughing all the time. Oh-oh.
Thursday, April 16th
From the 16th to the 19th we were both sick with colds. Hmm. How could that have happened? What could we do? Thank goodness we had two good remedies on hand.
Despite not feeling well, E went for a walk in the OSU forest where she found quite a few calypso orchids. We see these little flowers most years, but never very many. They tend to be solitary plants, at least around here. Seeing a group of three was extraordinary.
Monday, April 20th
While doing research for his unlikely to be completed autobiography, M came across this rather lovely photo taken from the International Space Station. Funny how national borders don’t show up at all from space. Can you guess what part of the earth this is? (The white stuff is cloud, not snow. And no, it’s not the strait of Hormuz, though it’s not far from there.)
The large body of water is the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The wide fingers of water in the lower left are two branches of the Red Sea–the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba. The peninsula between those two is the Sinai. The narrowest strip of blue on the left is the Nile River. (Check out that delta!) The island is Cyprus, where we lived from 2001 to 2003; the land mass above it is Turkey, where we lived for a year in 2007-08. The hazy land mass beyond Turkey is Europe–Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine and beyond. As for the land that fills up the lower right of the photo, it is home to all of Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, and also includes parts of Syria in the north and Saudi Arabia in the south.
Wednesday, April 22nd
We’ve watched two good movies lately, both named for cities and both related to Ireland. Brooklyn (2015) is based on a novel by Colm Tóibín about a young Irish woman who migrates to Brooklyn in the 1950’s. Belfast (2021) is a film by Kenneth Branagh based partly on his own childhood experiences in Belfast during a time of sectarian violence in the late 1960’s. We liked both of them very much.
Thursday, April 23rd
Today we went on a bug tour at the Oregon State Arthropod Collection. This took us to Cordley Hall on the OSU campus, a big 1950s building that has recently had a $147M restoration. Outside it still looks the same, but inside…it’s pretty different.
The Arthropod Collection is on the second floor. Curator/Manager Chris Marshall led the tour of the collection, assisted by senior Associate Curator Paul Hammond. Besides showing us through the refurbished facility and showing off some of the more spectacular specimens, Chris also shared details of how the collection is managed and what kinds of research go on there. It was a pleasure and an inspiration to hear him, as it so often is when real experts describe the issues that they are passionate about. These days the collection focuses on helping with research on local and regional insect populations rather than on the collection of beautiful and/or unusual specimens from exotic locations. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have such things on hand, as Chris made sure to show us.
We also learned that the greatest danger to any collection of insect specimens is–ironically–other insects, specifically those insect species that survive in the wild by eating insects, including dead ones. In nature, that’s a good thing; in an insect collection, not so much. For large collections, one of the prime methods of stamping out infestations of living insects is to put the collection trays into a -25 degree freezer for 4 days. This kills the harmful insects without using poisons.