Birds & berries

There is a tree in our front yard that turns dark red and produces berries each fall. I don't know what kind it is, but there are a few others in the neighborhood; it seems to be a popular sort. When the berries get "just right" the trees are swarmed by robins and cedar waxwings (see the photo at right); it would be easy to conjecture that the berries have fermented and the trees have become a local bar. But the birds don't seem to fly drunkenly (I've seen that and it's a strange sight indeed!) so probably they're just feeding and getting ready to fly south.  The robins should have gone already, because we've had snow flurries and it's gotten well below freezing.  But winter is close and we'll lose them all too soon now.

Fall chores

I got a lot done of fall chores done over the last few days. Rick and I took out a couple of large limbs from our big backyard tree to create a bit better balance and open up the ground to more sunlight, and we put up the deer fence around the junipers by the driveway. I did most of the work (and none of the creative culinary work) for a big batch of butternut squash soup (with 12 pounds of squash). Yum! I've put up the winter bird feeder and added a second hanger so I can get both sunflower and thistle seed on the same pipe. The birds also say Yum! I've also cleaned gutters, done a little weeding, and grilled what's probably the last set of burgers outdoors this season. Yum again! So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (it's forecast for later this week...)

Books we made

This fall we're in a bookbinding class, part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UI. Technically it's called "Adventures in Book Conservation" but "adventure" may not be quite accurate ;^} . The class instructors are from the Iowa Book Works, and the lead instructor is a conservator with the University library.Last night our class made books, using an ancient Ethiopian sewn-book technique. It was quite interesting and not too difficult, but the class members who knit, crochet, or sew seemed to find it easier than the others. The photo shows the books we made -- Judy's is upright and mine is reclining. If you can download and zoom into the photo you may see the pattern of the lock stitches on the spine; they can be quite nice.

Gas mileage

We've all (well, those of us who watch TV) seen lots and lots of ads about how fuel-efficient the new cars are. I'm not particularly impressed -- I have a 14-year-old Nissan Maxima that was the top of the line in its day: six cylinder, good power, lots of accessories (for its time). And when I filled up yesterday, I had gotten 21 mpg in town (that's actual, not estimated) and often get 30 mpg on the road, and that's with E10 ethanol content that should actually reduce mileage a bit. That's comparable with many new compact cars and better than any of the new six-cylinder midsize cars.

I sometimes rent cars and like to get the smallest car I can, and some of these just-like-a-car-but-smaller vehicles are OK, but I'm not sure I'd like them every day. The only car I've driven that impressed me more with its economy and driveability was a Volkswagen turbodiesel we drove in Scotland in 2006. I didn't figure the fuel "mileage" but even with the very high European fuel costs, the per-mile fuel cost was just about the same as our cost here. In the US, the Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen diesel (30/41 manual, 29/40 auto) are impressive, but I think the European version gets even better mileage.

Last Saturday farmers' market for the season

Fall is lovely in Iowa, with oaks turning rust-colored, maples bursting into flames, and sumacs becoming scarlet ranks along the roads. The weather breaks and long-sleeved shirts come up from the basement closet, but it's not yet cold enough to deal with icy roads. It's time for the year to come to closure, but the closure is tinged with sadness because it's the end of the farmers' markets. The stuff for sale is different now, with hard winter squash and late fruit predominating, but there are still fresh tomatos and even a few raspberries. We'll miss all the fresh food but it will be back in six months -- Iowa's own version of Orpheus and Euridice.

The Seacrest barn

Today was a celebration of the Seacrest barn's 125th year. This is an octagonal barn about 15 miles east of Iowa City. We have enjoyed visiting old barns, and this celebration also included a demonstration of Belgian work horses loading hay in the barn. So we went out and enjoyed the afternoon quite a bit.

The barn is quite complex, with a lower level having stables and milking stations, a "main floor" (where the ramp shown in the first picture leads) with workshops and various equipment, and an upper level that would have stored hay for the winter. The upper level was gorgeous, with an amazing domed ceiling that almost looked church-like.

The Belgian horses are beautiful, massive animals that are clearly capable of an amazing amount of work, but they are also very well mannered and take directions readily from their owner. It was beautiful to see how they worked, and it was amazing to see just how difficult it was to move hay from the main floor of the barn to the upper level. It seemed to take at least two different pulls on different ropes to get the hay lifted up and then moved over to the right storage area.

Perhaps the most surprising event of this aftenoon was seeing a graduate school friend at the barn. Kent Fuller worked for the same advisor I did, Frank Anderson, and I knew that he was in the Iowa City area, but we hadn't looked him up after I moved here. He and Gretchen were at the barn, though, and it was nice to say hello. I'm sure we'll get in touch with them when we can have time to catch up. A very nice treat for the day!

Washington and Facebook

I'm just back from some NSF panels in Washington. They were read-on-site panels, so we had to read, write reviews, meet our panels, and do panel summaries in just over two days. Hard work, but I always enjoy meeting other panelists and learning about what's happening around the country. And sometimes I even get some time on my own -- I was able to get to DCA pretty early so I could go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to catch a marvelous joint exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams. The exhibition was built around the concept that they had natural affinities, and I think it made the case pretty well. And, of course, their works are incredibly gorgeous.

While I was there I got an email from Rob inviting me to join Facebook and be his friend. I'm too old for that, I thought, but what the heck -- it's Rob, so how bad could it be? And it's not bad at all, though I think I'll stick with my blog and not be QUITE so cool as he is. But it is a chance to be a little closer to him and Trista, and that's great.

The Oxford Project

This evening Judy, Rick, and I went to the Englert Theater in downtown Iowa City for a reading from The Oxford Project, a new book from Peter Feldstein and Stephen Bloom. Peter is a friend of ours, and has been a friend of Judy's for years. The book gives an intimate and honest portrait of the small town of Oxford, Iowa, through photographs of people taken 21 years apart and through candid interviews with them. The reading tonight was in a theatrical style, with individuals reading the things that townspeople have said. Very effective, quite touching, and a wonderful look at small-town America. As Bloom said this evening, when you want to understand the real history of America, you won't get it from Sarah Palin or Barack Obama -- you'll get it from understanding the lives of people like these. A remarkable project about a very real town and the very real people in it.

Jury duty

I've had jury duty the last couple of days. I was selected yesterday for a criminal jury, and today we heard the prosecution testimony before a recess; after the recess we heard that the defendent had reached a plea agreement and we were released. The details aren't important, but I am comfortable that justice was done for both society and the defendent.

Johnson County has an interesting jury system. The shorthand name is "one day or one trial" -- you come in on Monday and are either selected for a jury that day or released. In either case, this is your jury exposure for four years (or longer). Because of the modest requirements, there are very few exclusions; everyone serves. This is a better system than the one-week exposure in Stanislaus County, California, but even that was better than many other counties. So I'm pleased to have been able to serve, and pleased at the treatment that jurors and potential jurors received. And it doesn't hurt that the jury payment was actually reasonable, given the amount of time I had to give -- much better than the minimal wage.

Our snake

Yesterday Rick and I saw a snake by the retaining wall in front of our house. It was a very small snake, probably just hatched this year, but I didn't recognize it (not that I have such a broad herpetological experience or anything). I took a photo (below) and looked it up online, and it seems to be a brown snake; Rick verified it with a better online reference. As we were looking at it, it crawled into the wall in a very small space between blocks. So now I guess we have a Resident Snake to help protect us from small insects.

Monarch butterflies

Iowa is on the fall migration route of the Monarch butterfly. There have been butterfly-tagging events here, and we routinely see them flying around. It's a lovely treat.This photo, from Drake University (wish I'd taken it myself!) shows a Monarch on some local wildflowers.

Fall flowers

We've started to get just a little bit of nip in the air here in Iowa, and some leaves are starting to act as though they really don't see much use in hanging around any longer. I guess fall is in the air. It's time for fall flowers. At the Farmers' Market last Saturday there were some wonderful pots of chrysanthemums for sale, and anyone with allergies will know about goldenrod.

There are also a number of very pretty fall-blooming wildflowers. Here are two photos of flowers out along the path behind the house. I don't know their names -- we have never been properly introduced -- but I enjoy greeting them as I walk by and enjoy their beauty.

Catching up

Once again, I've let the blog slip. Perhaps that's telling me something, but I'll choose to believe that I'll still be able to keep it up.

So -- what's happened over the last couple of weeks? We were in LA for a week at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, where we enjoyed the awards dinner where our very good friend Stephen Spencer received the 2008 Outstanding Service Award -- very much deserved. We also enjoyed seeing a number of friends. I also organizes a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session on teaching computer graphics in context in computer science that generated a very active and productive discussion, and was part of a short course on proposal writing. And after the conference we had a wonderful visit with Randy (our son on Judy's side) and Cynthia that included an informal organ concert at the home of Randy's boss. Some of the music was familiar and lovely, and some (by Olivier Messaien) was pretty challenging, though interesting.

Since coming home, I've been focused on working on the Computer Graphics Shaders textbook and on a paper that was accepted for SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore in December. I guess that focus is my excuse for not doing a blog sooner. But with the political conventions coming up, it should be a lot easier to find things to write about!

Please close the windows

We're deep into August, but the request "Please close the windows" doesn't mean what it usually does at this time of year. We've been having really nice weather with the low temperatures down in the lower 60s or even mid-50s, and Judy's been asking me to close the windows because it's uncomfortably cool for her. The long stretch of wet weather is also continuing, and I've not yet had to water any of our plants. (This has actually been going on over a year; I didn't need to water last summer either.) An unusual, but not unpleasant, stretch of weather -- though there are probably many places in the world where the weather is as bad as ours is good. Global warming brings all kinds of climate change.

How time flies...

It's been almost a month since my last posting -- a very busy month, but that's probably not a good excuse. In that month we've come home from China and gotten back on North American time, been to some NSF panels in Washington, Steve's been to an advisory board meeting in Edmonton, and we've been out to visit family in Sacramento. This is the first weekend we've been home in about six weeks. It's about time!

A few things to share from the month, though. First, you may have an image of a suburban home in China, but unless you've visited there you probably don't think of this:These are very interesting homes with plenty of room, but they don't look much like a North American or European home.

Second, we've talked about our extended Chinese "family" of friends who Judy knew through her lab at Iowa. While we were at the NSF panels we went to visit our friends Jie and Yu and their brand-new baby Alex. Such wonderful people!


Edmonton was a very quick trip with no sightseeing time, but I did take one photo to share. Remember that I'm a mathematician at heart, so I was glad to see an example of a hypoteneuse (with a nod to Tim for the bad pun):

This morning was one of those rare August mornings when the temperature and humidity both fell, and after we went out to the Saturday farmer's market (see the earlier posting on that) I went for a long walk. The woods undergrowth is high and had some interesting flowering plants, and there were some butterflies out along with lots of birds and a few baby rabbits. A really nice day. I hope your day was lovely too!

For shame!

Sometimes it's difficult to live up to one's principles. Forces seemingly outside one's control take over, and one does things that one really doesn't want to do. This is the story of one such situation.

We're in Suzhou, and we're out of instant coffee that we can brew in the room to start the day. Our hotel room does not include breakfast, and the daily price for breakfast is more than we want to pay. What to do, what to do?

One word: Starbucks.

We knew there was a Starbucks in Suzhou (we saw it when we visited two years ago), and we knew it was within walking distance (1/3 mile) from the hotel. And we knew that we really wanted some good coffee.

So we strayed from our principles and went to an American chain while we were out of the country. We walked right by the KFC, we turned up our nose at Pizza Hut, we didn't even give McDonald's an instant's thought. But we were led astray by Starbucks.

Be kind when you think of us, be generous, be forgiving. But damn, the coffee and scone were good this morning...

It's been too long...

I've not posted to this blog for over two weeks now, and (if anyone is reading and cares ;^} ) I apologize for that. In terms of the photos on the last entry, the place I was standing when I took the photo of Dubuque Street and the river was under a foot of water shortly after I took the photo, and the bridge I was standing on when I took the photo of the riverbank overflow was cut off on both ends as well. I just didn't have the heart to keep writing about the problems everyone was having. All the gory details can be found in the pages of the Iowa City Press Citizen or the Cedar Rapids Gazette online. The water is going down, and in some places has gone down quite a bit, but that just exposes the amount of damage in homes and businesses -- it will be a long time for people to get back, and some will (for good reason) just give up and move on. The lucky few had flood insurance, but the key word seems to be "few."

The good news is that Rick should be back at work, even though the hotel isn't yet open -- at the last I heard, he was supposed to help provide security for the hotel once it was accessible but not yet open. The management like him and want to keep him working for them, and that's nice to hear (though it doesn't surprise me; he's a good worker).

Anyway, I'll have more to say soon, but for now, thanks for your patience.

Summertime, and the livin' is sweaty...

It's been a cold, wet spring -- and we may have more to say on that later, since there are real flooding problems around the midwest this year -- but we always knew that the cool weather couldn't last. And it hasn't. Today it is so sticky, a bit warm but very, very humid, and we've put on the air conditioning for the first time. It's always good when we can hold off the A/C until June, and a week into the month is even better. But it's time for summer, and we'll hole up in the heat of the day now until September, when we can once again enjoy a time without A/C and without heat.

First firefly

Big night tonight -- I saw the first fireflies of the season. Fireflies, or lightning bugs as we called them when I was a kid, were one of the great treats of summer. I can't say I treated them well, but they were just plain magical. Now they're a large part of the summer experience, and it's good to see them again.

Iowa City Farmers' Market

Farmers' markets are among the treasures of life. I've enjoyed them several places, even in downtown Arlington, VA, but the farmers' markets in Iowa City and Coralville are among the best. Everything is guaranteed local, because people are only allowed to sell things they made or grew themselves, and everything is laid out beautifully because people are drawn to wonderful displays. There are five of these markets each week, but the largest is the Saturday morning market in Iowa cith, shown here.This market opens at 7:30 am, and Judy's always there by 7:15 so she can walk around and find the "specials" -- the stalls that have only one or two packages of berries, or the best tomatos, or whatever else is particularly good that week. She can then stand in line at the booths she chooses and wait for the whistle that lets vendors start selling. And my job is to stand in the second-best line and to carry whatever we buy. That keeps us in fresh vegetables (and other things -- this week, morel mushrooms) for the week to come. It's a great way to start the week!