Jane: Reading

Lest you think that all I do is crochet and garden, here are some books I've read recently--I'm on a committee that will help select next year's book that incoming students will read. Apparently, this is a big trend in colleges.

I'll share my one-sentence reviews from my reading journal and my other thoughts about the book. So far I've read:

Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The story of a 19th c. cholera epidemic in London and one doctor's detective work to determine the cause.

How do you identify the cause of a disease if you can't see it? How do you convince people that you've found the source . . . when they subscribe to a paradigm that won't let them see the truth? The doctor who's the protagonist of this non-fiction book figures out that cholera comes from water--but the prevailing view is that illness comes from smells: "miasma." The prevailing view is causing more and more people to die. This book is a detective stsory about a disease and the efforts of two people to find a way to stop it. Well written and provocative. The last chapter looks forward to suggest future scenarios for cities and disease.

This one would be a great book for incoming students. It raises all sorts of questions about epistemology and sociology and urban life! And it has its own website. But . . . our book for this year is about illness (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman--GREAT book, btw) and I don't know if we want to do two illness books, one after the other.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

High-energy and intense multi-perspective story of Oscar and his family of Dominican immigrants and how love, violence, and politics (not to mention books) shaped their lives.

One review called this book "delightful." I disagree. This is not a delightful book. Although it's funny and engaging and wondrous, it's also dark and violent and full of profanity. One of the background "characters" who shapes the lives of the main characters is the horrible Dominican dictator Trujillo. I found this to be an exhausting read--very "literary" in its use of multi-perspectives and stream of consciousness-ish style, and footnotes (yes, footnotes).

I would love to teach this book in a class on coming of age stories. That way the students and I could check in after reading sections and talk about it--so much to talk about! But I don't know if I could expect incoming 1st years to handle it alone very well. The best readers would, of course, but I fear it would totally alienate most students.

Robbie: Cybikos, SD Card

Eli and I got a new form of entertainment, or should i say INTERtainment. If, up to this point, you know that I am talking about the Cybiko, then I must have already told you about these or you watched... oh I can't even remember the name of the channel... in 2000. I didn't see it this way, but found out about it when my brother was talking about an
open source system.
Here is a picture taken from my DSi camera:

Yes. I got an SD card so now I can put music on my DSi and take 3000 pictures and put them either on my Wii or my mom's laptop.

Jane: Happy 4th!

This morning, people were racing past our house.

It's the annual FreedomFest race--this year it went right up our street to Bever Park. It was especially fun to watch the runners at the front of the race--they run so gracefully, stretching out their long legs.

It was raining, though, so we didn't have our flag out.

The rain didn't stop my ballet class! Just like New Year's Day, Carol held a ballet class today. It was just me and Corinne, a high-school girl. Carol tried to recruit my boys to help in the ballet this fall, La Fille Mal Garde.

I wore this new necklace to class.
I whipped it up in about an hour last night. Thought it would be fun to have something patriotic.

Jane: Black Belt highlights

I finally got around to creating a movie from the video footage I took of Robbie's black belt test.

Here it is!

Jane: More scale

Robbie discovered more magnolia scale on the big saucer magnolia in our front yard.

:-(

Of course you know, this means war!

I looked at more information on imidicloprid, and it's fairly non-toxic to people and other warm-blooded creatures . . . still, I don't think I want it in our back yard, near our vegetable and herb gardens.

So here's my plan. I'll get some granular imidicloprid for the front-yard magnolia. You just dig it into the soil around the tree and water it in. Then I'll wait on the back yard magnolia and spray it with insecticidal soap once the baby scale bugs emerge. They're called crawlers--just thinking about it makes me say "ew."

More later.

And for those of you east of us: relief from the horrible humidity and heat is coming! Today we have clear skies, low humidity, and temps of about 80!

Jane: Horticultural Advice

I was on a radio call-in show today.

No, not Rush Limbaugh! It was "Talk at Twelve," the local NPR show. Friday is Horticulture day, and I called in with a question about my star magnolia. Eli and I noticed these odd white dusty blobs on the underside of some of its branches the other day.
And below them, sticky black goo coated some of the leaves.
The entomologist knew what it was immediately.

"You have something any entomologist would love!" he said. "Do you want it?" I asked.

These blobs are Magnolia Scale, an odd insect that is Iowa's only native scale. It looks like a fungus, but it's some kind of insect. These blobs are sucking the sap from my magnolia. The sticky goo is the remnants of the sap that they excrete, which turns black with a fungus.

Ew.

Anyway, they suggested I begin by pruning the branches that have the most scale on them. Scale won't kill the tree immediately, but if they get it year after year, it will kill them.

I can also apply a systemic herbicide called imidacloprid that gets into the tree's sap and kills the scale. I may try that as the tree does seem to have a lot of scale on it, even after I trimmed the worst parts.

I blame it all on the hot and humid and rainy weather we've been having! One of my (non-fancy) hostas seems to have an aphid infestation as well. Ugh!

Eli: Front Yard ravine

These huge ruts in our yard were caused by very large equipment.
They're digging up an old fire hydrant next door, and had to drive onto our yard.
We hope the city will fix them.