How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

 I take attendance by having the students answer a question. Previously 2016, 2017, 2019.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Some students answered numerically:

• -2
• -1
• 1
• at least 1
• 2+1
• 3.141592
• pi
• 5
• 6
• 100g
• [illegible, but it looked like numbers?]

Some students answered with qualitative descriptions of the quantity of wood:

1. not much (x2)
2. not much, he's nashed
3. some (x2)
4. enough
5. lots
6. depends on the tree species
7. as much as it could
8. as much as it wants
9. as much as a woodchuck could!
10. as long as its hungry

Some students replied to my question with an answer designed to make me stop asking:

• no idea
• I don't know (x3)
• when a woodchuck chucks
• if a wood chuck could chuck wood (x2)
• chuck

The "most pragmatic" award goes to:

• depends if a woodchuck could chuck wood

The "most enigmatic award goes to:

• would?

This post's theme word is alible (adj), "nutritious; nourishing." Wood is not considered alible for most students in my class.

Wolfwalkers

 Wolfwalkers is an animated film from the same director as The Secret of Kells. It has a similar sort of art and line style, with movements easily flowing across the screen in a way I found very aesthetically pleasing. You can read the plot summary on Wikipedia, so I'll just give some viewing notes:

If possible, you should view this on a bedsheet in a neighbor's backyard.

Cover your delicious blood with skin, and cover that with clothing, then bugspray. (You will still be bitten on the face, and hands, and through your socks. This is the destiny of the delicious. Your itchy discomfort will be offset by the bug-free experience of neighbor kids.)

At the appropriate time --- and trust me, you will know the appropriate time --- you should absolutely howl along with the onscreen wolves. Everyone else, on their lawn chairs and picnic blankets, will absolutely do this, especially if < 7 years old.

Five stars, highly recommended. Not entirely historically-accurate.

This post's theme word is eidolon (n), "an idealized form" or "a phantom". The animation smoothly showed transition between physical humans, eidolon scents and spirits, and wolves.

Fluffy puppy on a textured lawn

 Every part of this photo seems to invite fingers to run across it.

Ika on Parrish Beach.

This post's theme word is talpa (n), either "a mole (the animal)" or "a cyst". The dog is sniffing for talpa in the lawn.

Uninhabited

 It's a pandemic and we've sent away the few students who were here. This is campus but looks as empty as a golf course.

This post's theme word is kapu (n), "taboo" (Hawaiian root). Even hanging out on the lawn is kapu in pandemic summer.

Great texture

 The curb-to-sidewalk verge has a fantastic texture!

This post's theme word is marsescence (n), "the retention of dead leaves, etc., instead of shedding." Some weeds favor marsescence but it's not evidenced in springtime photos of fresh growth.

Phallacy

Emily Willingham's Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis is not what I expected. Based on the cover art and the subtitle, it seemed packaged as a popular science book, so I thought it would be a little biology, some interesting research anecdotes maybe, and (of course) the mandatory discussion of bedbugs and slugs ("traumatic insemination" is an extremely clickbait-y phrase).

The book did include those things, but they were side notes --- its true focus was humans, and particularly the way that we (esp. in the west) have structured society in general and scientific research in particular to ignore things that are female-affiliated, even when that is an obvious detriment to scientific knowledge and research advancement. Plus there was an always-uncomfortable, but straightforward and unforgiving, broad consideration of toxic masculinity.

I think in retrospect that it's mostly "life lessons" and only sort of tangentially about "the animal penis", especially since the book itself contains so many descriptions of ways that various animals transfer gametes that are not a penis. The tone overall was straightforward but wry and unquestionably a woman's voice: it unflinchingly and repeatedly drew parallels to the animal kingdom and pointed out how hollow and stupid and full of preconceived notions those parallels were. It was sprinkled with absolutely fantastic footnotes and asides. Willingham has a wonderful authorial tone and a gift for introducing neologisms and puns, casually adding references to popular culture and ancient history, and overall just making me wish that I was her friend so we could cackle together.

My notes overall ended up being mostly phrases or sentences that just struck me as awesome:

• simile used when discussing evolution: "You can be as fragile as a dictator's ego and still have attributes that prop you up, keep you alive in the current environment, and lead you to successful reproduction." (p 14)
• "When it comes to evolutionary studies of sex, gender, and genitalia, guess who the "winners" are?* [footnote: *Men. It's men.]" (p 15)
• "In this work, they used what they called "haptics" and every one else calls "dildos"" (p 30)
• "Lest I come across as unamused and far too earnest, I do think that genitalia and fart jokes can be hilarious." (p 46)
• "Frogs collect of an evening round the pond," (p 65)
• "Given that the human penis couldn't stab through a perfectly ripe avocado," (p 77)
• "The genre of "arthropod (and invertebrate) sex films" is small but mighty." (p 77)
• "This is a very fighty kind of bird, considering that they all apparently agree to go condo together." (p 84)
• "Who hasn't needed, at some point, to reach a neighbor with a lengthy protrusible organ, even if it was just spraying them with a water hose? If you're a barnacle, ..." (p 86)
• "[footnote: *The noise that they make is called "orgling."]" (p 106)
• p 132 she discusses her previous teaching and describes herself as showing slides and "intoning" and then says "I was obviously electric in the classroom."
• some great neologisms like "intromittens" (used frequently) and "tuatararium" (a terrarium for tuatara, p 216) which often is accompanied e.g. by "[footnote: *Yes, I made this word up.]"
• on p 288 I was caught off-guard by the phrase "squad goals" used w.r.t. mites
• "got his Twitter account... suspended for violating Twitter rules, which we all know is almost impossible to do if you're a white male." (p 243)
• "Lest I attract unnecessary derision (only necessary derision, please), no, I do not really think that..." (p 257)
• "This particular, not especially long (in words, but oh, the psychic pain lingers) paper uses the word "penis" more than a hundred times and the word "phallus" sixty times." (p 268)

Overall the book was interesting and suggested new ways of considering and engaging with these issues, and I liked it. I probably wouldn't have read it if not for the squid on the cover, though, so I know my own vulnerabilities.

This post's theme word is lepodactylous (adj), "having slender fingers or toes." I will not be able to consider mittens for the lepodactylous without thinking of arachnids.

Mosquito resolution

 After many months of living at the end of a narrow internet pipe, my bits finally stopped flowing (the pipe was blocked? ok, metaphor) and I caved and signed up for fiber. Now I have a much bigger pipe! Bits are freely flowing as never before!

Importantly, I am now viewable as many pixels, often even in motion, for my many, many, video calls. My life (and many others) now consists mostly of taking video calls in different parts of my dwelling, and my interlocutors can now see me in smooth motion and continuous audio! What luxury and decadence, etc.

The pixels are in fact so delicate and rich that yesterday during lunch on my porch, my interlocutor was able to see the mosquito that I chased in and out of the frame, as it hovered around me and tormented me with the threat of stealing my blood. This was nice, because I got reassurances that I wasn't completely insane (another person validated the visible insect!) and that I didn't look completely insane (chasing an invisible phantom).

Today I received a belated housewarming gift: a giant citronella candle. Emphasis on the houseWARMing, and also on the acknowledged battle that owning a house is: battle against my house being washed away, battle against incursions of snow and mice, and the personal battle to keep all of my blood --- which, I want to emphasize, I am currently using to support vital life operations --- inside my body. I don't plan to burn it indoors, but hopefully this will resolve my outdoor mosquito deliciousness problem.

This post's theme word is henotheism (n), "belief in or worship of one god without denying the possibility of others." Welcome to my henotheistic house; over there is the citronella shrine.

Cobwebs

I went outside and discovered a spider had built an extensive web across the rear entrance of my house, spanning the door, deck, and stairs. This is some sort of arachnoid commentary on human self-quarantine and it struck me as both sticky and humorous. (Zeugma!)

This venture into the horrible humidity was made in order to chip away at emptying my office, which I'm not-really-using, for sabbatical so that someone else can not-really-use it. (Everything is wonderful, the world is totally fine, don't look too closely.) My two most neglected plants stubbornly hang on in what is surely the most arid, frigid, inhospitable summer that southern Pennsylvania can artificially offer to indoor plant life. An enterprising indoor spider, hoping in vain to capture prey in the abandoned, sealed, locked building, had constructed a foolishly hopeful web from the ceiling down to the desk chair, completely blocking off the shelves and the keyboard. This struck me as sticky and a silly emerging theme.

Are spiders everywhere just constantly walling in everything, and only the entropy of weather and large fauna keeps pathways clear?

Given the prevalence of webs, the visible black cloud of mosquitos that chased me from my car back into my house seemed incongruous. YES, I had to pass through a partially-reconstructed deck-spanning web to reenter the house. NO, it did not appear to dissuade the accursed vampiric horrors. Please, can we get some mosquito-eating bats to colonize my block?

This post's theme word is durance (n), "confinement or restraint by force; imprisonment." In this grimdark modern fairytale, the protagonist is self-quarantined at home and entirely encased in cobwebs and loneliness so thick that the quarantine becomes permanent; "Dream Durance" is rated NC-17 for psychic damage inflicted on readers and anyone attempting to engage in concurrent political discourse.

Not enough flamingos

There were a lot of landscapers cleaning up this yard, but I walked by too late to see what must have been an incredible Flamingo Setup Period.

an unlikelihood of flamingos

This post's theme word is homochromatic (adj), "having one color." The hovering flamingos provided an ambient homochromatic layer of unlikely pink.

Loose chickens

 These chickens were just out on the sidewalk.

Chicken run? More like chicken, lightly wander around.

This post's theme word is rutilant (adj), "glowing, shining, or glittering with a red or golden light." The chickens were drawn to the sidewalk's rutilant appeal in the late afternoon.

National Moth Week

It's National Moth Week, as you surely already know. I observed the ... week... by going to a moth-viewing event. We heard a little lecture about moths and then a brief lecture about ticks (summary: "It's Pennsylvania. There are going to be ticks.") and then we were lead out into the woods to view some moth-baited sites.

I learned that there are moth fanatics, a conference called Mothapalooza!, and that moth enthusiasts are called "moth-ers" and are, generally, into very fancy camera equipment that can take high-resolution digital photos for instant viewing in low-light conditions.

Here's the best my equipment could do: 

A white-with-black-spots moth and a cricket of some sort.

The Audubon Society --- which hosted this event --- is generally pro-nature (moths included), not just pro-birds (though now that I think about it, their interests might be limited to "flight-capable animals").

No moths were harmed in the making of this blog post, though ticks were strongly discouraged, sprayed against, and then minutely searched-for in the aftermath.


This post's theme word is acarophobia (n), "an extreme fear of small insects", "the delusion that one's skin is infected with bugs," or "a fear of itching." Watching a swarm of nighttime insects creep across a high-contrast white sheet ticked both the formication and acarophobic boxes of my brain.

Bunny zone

Frequently spotted on the block are an unnumbered collection of bunnies. These are not just my neighbors, but also my non-tax-paying non-consensual garden trimmers.

 There are certainly at least two of them at the full size:

Additionally, there is at least one (but likely many) tiny bunbun, waffeting around in the yard and being frightened of things like "local residents watering flowers" and "door opening noise".

Given the local paucity of hawks, I suspect that the bunbuns are numerous, though I do not suspect them in The Matter of The Blueberry Thief.

This post's theme word is cynophobia (n), "fear of dogs." The itty-bitty bunny-wunnies exhibited cynophobia, having not yet learned the lesson of dog leashes and recalcitrant suburban humans.

Blueberries

I am a notorious blueberry-lover. 'Twas with great anticipation that I received the housewarming gift of someone planting blueberry bushes for me, just outside my window.

One plant even came with a blueberry, already there!

... unfortunately, this blueberry only survived two days in the yard. I checked on it lovingly each morning and evening, keeping in touch with its gradually blue-ing hue; then it mysteriously vanished. According to leads and the berry investigator, local birds are the leading suspect.

A very close inspection this evening revealed that the bush is trying again with a second berry.

This berry will be closely guarded, from its current green state to its future and fully-ripe state. I already have a plan to encase it in mesh to protect from bird incursions.

I note that the plural in the title of this blog post is, in fact, accurate: there have been two berries. A third will be just as welcome!


This post's theme word is fabian (adj), "avoiding direct confrontation; cautious; delaying." The fabian approach to berry-harvesting requires protection against impatient berry-eating competitors.

New neighbor

I have a new neighbor. Can you spot them in this picture?

They were nibbling on something in the lawn, but I am not yet familiar with all the plantings so I had no objection. My guess is that any dogs visiting Camp Lila over the summer will strongly react to the neighbor, possibly encouraging the neighbor to relocate.

This post's theme word is Struwwelpeter (n), "a person with long, thick, disheveled hair." Quoth Flopsy to Mopsy and Cottontail, "Have thee spotted our Struwwelpeter blue-haired new neighbor?"

Crisp clear spring sky

When I walked to work this morning the sun had just risen and it was cold, so I wore my jacket and mittens. But it turned out to be a warm, clear spring day, and my outerwear is overdone.

Just look at this cleanly blue sky, framed by local spring-ready trees:

This post's theme song is Ben Platt's "Better", which has been on a loop in my head all day. It is sad and angry and an emotional wreck of a breakup song, but the self-echoing refrain scratches a mental itch and is immensely satisfying to hear. (Plus there are tons of repeated lyrics and they follow standard rhyme patterns, so it's quick to memorize.)

Living in a postcard

It's incredibly picturesque here.

And that's true even without the filters added!

This post's theme word is revet (v. tr.), "to cover a wall, embankment, etc., with masonry or other supporting material." Backyards and sidewalks revetted to follow streams and allow for trees and landscaping!

Spectacular sunset

Really spectacular sunset today.

I mean, the sun set in its usual way (by having my reference frame zoom to point away), but the intervening atmosphere was full of some sort of pollutant or airborne ooze that gave the light Renaissance-ceiling levels of cloud coloration.


This post's theme word is faience (n), "glazed earthenware, especially decorated tin-glazed pottery." The colors reminded me of ornate faience.

Ithaca is gorgeous

By well-known folk wisdom, the gorges are gorgeous:

Seriously scenic hiking.

 We came in search of a geocache, which we needed rock-climbing rope and headlamps to find. Advanced level only.

View across and down the gorge towards the lake.

 We did actually end up climbing down/across/into a gorge and walking along the bottom for a little bit.

The view upstream, bridge in sight.

Gorges aside, Ithaca is full of lovely sights.

Nice fluffy trees and brightly-painted angular metal sculptures.

Sweeping expanses of greenery sloping down towards the lake.

Lots and lots of trees precariously growing on ledges.

I enjoy the special features of Ithaca; things I've only noticed now that I have experienced their absence in the rest of the world. For example, this sign:

"No skiing, sledding, or sliding"

The variegated trees lining the highways as I drove were also very nice.

This post's theme word is campanile (n), "a bell tower, especially one detached from a main building such as a church." Sledding is expressly forbidden on the slopes below the campanile, but students frequently use food trays to careen down the snowy expanse anyway.

Purple tree

I would later learn more about it, but for the moment, I remain charmed and baffled by the purple-painted tree, in its own separate zone and with accompanying bench, in the middle of this lawn.

That's no photosynthesis I know.

This post's theme word is senesce (v intr), "to grow old or decay." In their safe, slow sencescence, Swarthmore shrubs sometimes stain strange shades.

Courtship tokens

My desk already had fun math puzzles, as decoration and to occupy my hands and mind while I spin my brain-wheels on research problems.

To these I now add recently-received wooing tokens, these two octopuses.

As far as romancing goes, I cannot think of a more attractive feature than access to a 3D printer and willingness to print tiny, creepy cephalopods.


This post's theme word is cumshaw, "a gift or tip." This cumshaw octopus collects scrimshaw.