History, naturally

About two weeks before Christmas, desperately hoping to wrap up (no pun intended) my Christmas shopping, I rode my bike in to the Mall to take a look in the Smithsonian stores.  I like being able to support the Institution, because even if a lot of what they have is mass-produced stuff, it's sciency mass-produced stuff.  I also hold the opinion that anyone should be excited to get a dinosaur for Christmas.

My first two stops were busts.  I hate Christmas shopping anyway, and it's worse when you have no income; I feel obligated to buy things for other people, because I can never convince them to not buy something for me, but I still have no good way to pay for that stuff.  To take my mind off it, and take advantage of the trip, I poked around in the natural history museum for a bit before finally locating something that might work as a gift for someone.

This sign wasn't here the last time I visited; this time, there was one on each side of the lab.

I like re-visiting the natural history museum mainly because I like looking at dinosaurs, but the random stranger I started talking to didn't seem to appreciate my insights, so I kept to myself for the rest of the visit, and paid attention to signs I hadn't fully absorbed in the past.  That's how I learned a fascinating new word.  I don't know how much I'll get to use it, but my very favorite word really only comes up in conversation when I mention what my very favorite word is (it's self-defining!).  I have a coffee mug sporting my second favorite word, but the context tells the reader nothing of its meaning.

After my tour of the cretaceous (and early mammals), I somehow found an entire hall that I don't think I've ever visited before: early man.  There was a really good display of hominids that showed life-size models of their heads displayed in cases around the room to simultaneously show how tall average members of the species were.  It was a simple and very effective way to give me an idea of scale that I'd never had before, and I learned about a species I'd never even heard of, despite a college anthropology course dedicated specifically to man's evolution.

Homo floresiensis lived on an Indonesian island, stood about three feet tall, and had a brain about a third the size of ours, but employed fire, tools, and hunting.  Being small was an advantage in an environment with limited resources, but they were easy prey for the much larger Komodo dragons.

This blows

...but not like that.  It was actually really, really fascinating, and I hope I get to go do it again.

A friend of ours does glass blowing.  I don't know how long she's been doing it, but it's been long enough that she sells stuff on Etsy, and she likes to stock up a pile of ornaments before the holidays so she can sell those, too.

This piece has already collected some frit, and been re-heated.

We learned through a mutual friend that she sometimes enlists helpers to make the ornaments, and offers up one of the ornaments as payment.  Sucker!!  I would have done it just to watch the process.  For that matter, I would have sat quietly in the corner and never said a word, if she were willing to explain everything to me as she worked.

Glory hole.  Hee hee!

She starts by collecting some white (clear) glass from the crucible in the furnace.  There aren't any pictures of that because it's so ridiculously hot in there that you can't even see where the air stops and the glass starts until you dip a pipe in low enough to disturb the surface of the glass.  Everything inside the furnace glows bright orange; the glassblowers all wear sunglasses just for this step.  I didn't even think it was safe to point my camera in there.  The hot glass is rolled on a metal table called a marver to give it a slightly tapered shape (see the first picture, above).  Color is added by rolling it through tiny pieces of broken glass called frit.  This can be arranged in stripes on the table to get certain color patterns in the finished piece.

Forming the glass with tweezers.

The glass may be reheated several times in a smaller furnace ("glory hole") to keep it soft enough to form.  The glory hole is around 2,000F.  While she formed the pieces, we sat at the other end of the pipe and provided air.  She told us all we had to know was how to blow up a balloon, and how to hit something with a hammer (it turned out to just be a stick of wood), but even at 2,000 degrees, glass doesn't want to change shape, so it's less like blowing up a balloon and more like trying to inflate a Coke bottle.  There were times when it hurt my head a little.

Blowing red-hot glass in a mold gives texture to the finished piece.

After she was done forming the ornament (using whatever method she chose for that particular item), we took it across the shop to another table to break it off the pipe.  This sometimes required rotating the pipe as we went, because the glass was still hot and pliable, and we didn't want it to distort its shape or fall off the pipe.  At the table, we held the pipe high and vertical to set the ornament in a heat-resistant fixture, then whacked the pipe with a stick.  The shock on the pipe broke the connection to the ornament, leaving it in the fixture.  This part always worried me.  I was sure that I'd hit it too hard--or not hard enough, requiring further whacks--and ruin the ornament she'd spent so long making.  This might have derived from the third ornament we made, which really was ruined at about that time.

Collecting frit from the marver.

While we were banging pipes with sticks, she would collect a glob of glass from the furnace.  The Girl or I would hold the ornament with tongs while our glassblower friend applied a dollop of hot glass to the top of the ornament, sealing it and covering the broken edges.  While it was still hot and gooey, she'd twist it with tweezers to form a loop.  There aren't many pictures of these last few steps, because I was usually too busy holding or smacking things to get my camera.  I try to not screw around too much when I'm handling anything over 1,000 degrees.

Using tweezers to stretch out a molded ornament.

Once the loop is applied, the ornament goes into an annealer (a very hot box) to cool overnight.  When the ornament goes in, the box is around 900F.  The temperature slowly drops over twelve hours.  If the glass cools too quickly, it will break.

Feathering the glass on a wrapped ornament.

She also showed us a wrap, another way to apply color to an ornament.  While she prepared the basic clear ornament, I kept a separate rod (which wasn't hollow, so it wasn't a pipe, but I don't know if there's a technical term for it) hot in the glory hole, taking it out periodically to keep it from getting too runny, and rotating it the whole time.  She had already applied a glob of colored glass on the end of the rod.

The wrapped ornament gets a loop.  Note that the loop glass is still glowing.

When the basic ornament had its shape, I stood behind the glassblower and held the rod over the ornament.  She used tweezers to pull out a line of glass (think about hot cheese on your pizza) to the ornament, then rolled it forward as I followed to get a spiral of solid color wrapped around the ornament.  Then she'd usually re-heat the whole thing, and use a hook to pull on the bands on opposite sides to get that swept-up look--that's called feathering.

Frit for a striped piece.

I like knowing how everything is made, and I'd never been able to see glassblowing up-close and personal before, much less help do it, so I was enthralled all night.  The shop we visited often has events, open houses, and classes, and if you're interested, I'd recommend a visit.

Juneau? Alaska.

The Girl and I had three separate Thanksgiving dinners this year, and managed for the first time in several years to attend my family's traditional Game Gatherings which occur on Turkey Weekend.  By the time we reached our third tableful of turkey and associated sides, I was just about spent.  I mean--one of those meals alone had three different turkeys.  I felt like I should fast for a week after we got home just to feel normal again.  I mean, I didn't, but I felt like it would be perfectly reasonable, and for me, that's saying something significant.  I don't skip meals.  Sometimes I invent new ones.

The nice thing about Thanksgiving with her family is that it's always been the last of our Great Turkey Stuffings (wordplay! ZING!), and it's also the most low-key.  For the past few years, the four "kids" have made the meal, and when I revealed last year that I make a passable pie, it became my job for this year.  Now that I know it means I can do my work in the morning and then get out of the way for the rest of the day, I will never relinquish that role.  Why would I?  While they were going crazy about some silly game, I slipped out and went for a walk.  When I got back to the yard, I still didn't feel like being inside, but I noticed that the snow was packing really well.  I started rolling a big snowball, while my internal soundtrack making me laugh a little, without any real idea of what I was going to do with it.  Maybe a snowman.

Nope.  Instead of a snowman, this happened.

It's more spacious than my posture would suggest.  But not by much,

It didn't get finished until the next morning, and The Girl's brother came out to help finish it, but I still had a lot of fun using up every bit of snow in the yard (think I'm kidding?  Look at the picture.) to build an igloo.  I hadn't built one of those in decades.  When this one melts, the front yard will have a swamp full of leaves, hickory shells, mushrooms, apples, and all the other lawn litter that got collected with the snow.  I made it for myself, because I just really wanted to, but the excuse was The Girl's nephew.  They told me he had been watching me build it and was very interested, but when we tried to get him to go inside, his emotions ran closer to "terrified."  I don't think he appreciates how cool igloos are.  Maybe next year.

Ohiopyle

Earlier this year, The Girl got a fitbit pedometer.  The fitbit website's leaderboard and stat tracking, combined with her ravening addiction to competition, has made her... "monster" seems harsh, but it also fails to capture the extent of her dedication.  If, at 10:49 some evening, she checks in on the website and discovers that she has only 14,789 steps for the day, she will pace the length of the apartment with exaggerated fervor in order to win the "15,000 Step Badge," a digital token of her day's efforts.  If the step count is 19,208 steps, she will exit the building, clad in pajamas and a jacket, and walk laps around the block until she has earned the slightly more elusive pixelated medallion for a 20,000 step day.

I mention this only because I aim to express to you the extent of her rage after the battery died at the end of a long day of hiking in Pennsylvania, and even though she replaced the battery to preserve the unit's memory, she was somehow denied the 25,000 Step Badge she would have otherwise earned for that day.  It happened in mid-October, and she still mentions it, fury simmering under her constrained voice.

Otherwise, it was a great weekend.

We had enjoyed an earlier weekend camping and hiking in the spring with the same couple, and even though The Girl had spent some time gallivanting through Germany with them over the summer, I didn't get to go, and they really like eating Dutch babies (I promise that's a real thing that doesn't involve any actual infants, but you feel free to let your imagination run wild), so we planned another excursion this fall.

The variety of colors and shapes exhibited by fungus fascinates me, though I have made very little effort to learn more about them.

This time, instead of the Shenandoah's Middle District, we aimed for Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, which was more central to our two locations, and offers some fun whitewater which is still easily managed by beginners.

No rafting on this trip, but plenty of good hiking.

Nobody wanted to go rafting with me.  Something about "too cold in October."  To be honest, I stopped listening to the reason when they started laughing like I was crazy.

I hadn't been to Ohiopyle since I was in junior high or high school, when my brother was finally old enough to go whitewater rafting, and Mom and Dad took us there to raft the Youghiogheny River, which is nearly as much fun to spell as it is to say (most people just call it "the Yough," which inexplicably rhymes with "the rock").  We camped, we rafted, my brother was launched high into the air, and we went to see Falling Water.  It was a great trip.

As the four of us planned this trip, I left most of it to the other three.  I knew I'd be outside a lot no matter what they planned, and that's enough to keep me happy.  I directed my attention toward the menu (I was responsible only for dinners and breakfasts--the other two planned lunches).  Despite not baking a single baby, the only criticism I received was that they thought there was too much food.  I managed to solve that problem single-handedly.

Later, we found out that another pair of hiking-inclined friends had also spent the weekend in Ohiopyle State Park--had we only known ahead of time, we could have planned a little better, and I wouldn't have had to eat all the leftovers myself.  Plus, the cabin we rented had two other bedrooms we never used.  It was huge.

Cucumber Falls

Saturday was our long hike, wandering along the Meadow Run trails to Ohiopyle and Cucumber Falls, then trying to find our way up to a higher viewpoint over the valley.  That effort was thwarted by a combination of inaccurate maps and poorly marked trails, but we still got a good hike out of it, and we met a trio of other hikers who had found a young salamander (photo somewhere below).

Plus, it was the height of Pennsylvania's autumn, and the fall colors were pretty incredible.

See?  I told you there was a salamander!

On Sunday, we parked in Ohiopyle, saw the falls, and hiked along a towpath trail for a while.  This side of the park was charted a bit better, and we were able to find the trails we wanted.

Ohiopyle Falls

Handiest trick I learned all week, even if it only works in PA.

Round pupils!  He's just a harmless Eastern Milk Snake.  Adorable, isn't he?

All of us had to drive home Sunday, so we didn't hike as much as the previous day.  As it turns out, we timed the day perfectly, because it started raining shortly after we got back to the cars, and poured like crazy for the entire drive back to DC.  Every time we drove downhill, I wondered if there would be a road or a river at the bottom.

Cucumber Falls from a higher vantage point.

About a month ago, we started planning the next trip.  Maybe this time I'll cook some babies.

Botanic Garden, again

When my friend came to visit, we accidentally wandered into the National Book Festival, which was an adventure in itself, and maybe I'll mention it again later.  For now, suffice to say that The Girl was so excited that it was happening again (and my friend, for reasons of his own), that we scrapped our plans to go to Harpers Ferry on the last day of his visit and instead went back to the Mall for more book madness.  The Girl knew who she wanted to see speak, and since we had until afternoon to make that show, we spent the morning at the Botanic Garden.  We need no other excuse for that; it's beautiful, generally peaceful, and I tend to take visitors there because I like it.  There's no need for further explanation by now; just enjoy the pictures.

Vanda "Robert's Delight" Orchid

Cleistocactus winteri

Baja Fairy-Duster, which seems to be in bloom every single time I visit the Gardens.

cacao pods

Pineapple!  I love pineapple!!

Purple Heart reminded us of the red plants brought by the invaders in War of the Worlds.  Don't hold that against it.

Venus Fly Traps.  Who doesn't love carnivorous plants?  That's SO COOL!!  The Girl might have tickled a couple to see them close.  She's down to nine fingers now.

Miltonia Belle Glade Orchid