Spring Garden

Here are some pictures from around my yard this spring. The front, east side of the house (I have nothing on the west side - I need to get something to balance out the azaleas):





After the light pink and white azalea flowers fell off, I was surprised to see this orangey-red one bloom right next to them:



I missed this purple flower at its peak, but here it is before the petals completely fell off. This is alongside the west side of the house:


My herb and vegetable garden is looking pretty good, I think - a lot better than last year. I've got some basil, cilantro, rosemary, mint, parsley, red bell peppers, sungold tomatoes, early girl tomatoes, and marigolds around the edge:







I ate that orange sungold a few days ago, and by today the three yellow ones were nice and ripe and sweet. Here is my dinner from earlier this evening:

• leftover tomato-goat cheese quiche made with fresh herbs from the garden
• Swiss chard (from Durham's farmers market) sauteed in olive oil with red onion, garlic, and seasoning
• sungold tomatoes from the garden
• toasted oat wheat bread from Durham's farmers market
  

Yummy!

More photos from my little garden can be found here.

Walk-Off WIN!!

Omigosh, I would have LOVED to have been at the Orioles game yesterday afternoon. The Os scored 5 runs in the 8th to tie it and 4 runs in the 11th to win 12-10! Crazy! Is this their first series sweep of the season? Might be. I wish they'd do stuff like this more often! Watch the video of Reimold's walk-off 3-run homer to win it - so exciting!!

New Supreme Court Justice Nominee

Is Obama announcing his new nominee or marrying her?

















(just kidding of course!)

Food

Some yummy recipes I tried recently from the "Joy of Cooking". Homemade mac n' cheese:





Tomato and goat cheese quiche (with basil and parsley from my garden):

More on maternal health in Africa

Another eye-opening article in today's NY Times. Also, see the slideshow. Instead of arguing about abortion rights here in the U.S., we should be uniting to reduces these preventable deaths.

Madeline

Here are some recent pictures of my weird fur-baby. With the beautiful weather, she loves to go outside, and often prefers one of the ugliest, dirtiest spots:



Speaking of odd places cats pick out: she normally loves my mom's house, but the last couple weekends we've gone up, one of her favorite spots has been her crate!



As if being in her crate wasn't anti-social enough, she had to snub us even more:



Although when the opportunity arose to go outside, she left her crate and joined us in the yard:





And here's a bonus - now that I have my brand-new desktop PC instead of my slow, ancient 6 year old laptop, I have enough memory to upload video!

Speaking of Mother's Day...

...please read this op-ed column from the NY Times. This is an excellent example of why the efforts of anti-choicers to eliminate this funding is not really "pro-life" at all. Thank you Obama, for repealing the Global Gag Rule!

Mother's Day at Camden Yards

For Mother's Day last weekend I took my mom to an Orioles game at Camden Yards. We were both pretty excited about it because we are big fans but neither of us had been to a game in a long time. Unfortunately, the Orioles lost to the Yankees 5-3 (grrr! all those Yankee fans looked so smug!), but we still had a great time. Also unfortunately, I came SO FRICKIN CLOSE to nabbing a foul ball! I am not kidding! I was coming back from the bathroom, heading up the ramp to the seating area when this foul ball sailed right over my head. I assumed there'd be a mob of people going after it, so I kind of only half-heartedly turned around and went back inside the stadium. To my surprise, almost no one was looking for it except me and some kid. I was scanning the floor quickly, but we were right by a stadium entrance, so I started gazing outside the stadium, wondering if it had rolled out there. Then some guy walking by with his food stopped right next to me, squatted down, and picked up the ball that I had completely not seen!! Grrr, this was more frustrating than the Orioles losing I think! Oh well.

Anyway, our seats were under the club-level overhang, but they were field level and a pretty good view, including of the Oriole's dugout:





I got some pretty good pictures of my favorite players. Melvin Mora (notice everyone using the pink bats and armbands for Mother's Day and breast cancer awareness):



Adam Jones (heal quickly, Mr. Jones!):



Nick Markakis:



and of course Brian Roberts:



and more Brian Roberts:



and more Brian Roberts:



Ooh, and this was really cute - the Oriole bird's mom was there for Mother's Day!



And this was really funny: a few fans had these foam syringes that said "A-roids" in orange lettering. Get it? Haha! Here's the back of one of them here. The fans were waving them in the air whenever A-rod was up at bat, and the security person was asking this fan to knock it off, although the Coors Light guy appears to appreciate it!



The rest of my photos, including even more of Brian Roberts, can be viewed here.

Incest

Okay, so I think that I surprised some people when I stated that incestuous marriages should be legal. Well...yes, I am THAT liberal! This is in line with two of my beliefs about marriage: (1) as long as U.S. government has created the benefits-attached institution of civil marriage, all adult citizens should be eligible to enter into this legal contract with whichever consenting adult they love most and to whom they desire to make a lifelong commitment; and (2) marriage is not necessarily about procreation. This is why our nation allows marriage between people who are sterile, genetically defective, child abusers, or have no desire to create or adopt children.

Connie, I haven't checked out the links you provided, because frankly, it doesn't matter what the risks are for siblings, cousins, parent-child, etc. having children (although I think the risks are lower than many people think). But it doesn't matter! For what it's worth, the MD/PA couple in the Post article I mentioned explicitly stated that they did not intend to have children. But the fact is, they are planning to spend their lives together no matter what the government says, so why can't the government just go ahead and make their union a civil marriage? To do that would NOT mean that our government "condones incest". Divorce and adultery are legal, but does that mean that our government condones them? I hope not!!

Regarding the "propensity for power abuses" that might occur if a father marries a daughter: unfortunately, the notion of an older, more powerful man forcing a minor or much younger woman to marry him and making it appear consensual (when it is really brainwashing) is already a problem (remember the Texas cult compound thing? Although I don't think those were legal marriages). It's awful, and it needs to be prevented, but I don't think allowing incestuous marriages will increase these occurrences, especially if we redouble our efforts to prevent domestic violence and abuse again women. We should be ensuring that ALL relationships, not just marriage, are consensual and free from abuse.

Anyway, my take-home point is that our society would be better in multiple ways if the legal contract of civil marriage accommodated ALL couples who desire a life-long commitment to each other, as long as these relationships are between consenting adults.

Yet another reason to legalize same-sex marriage

Check out this NY Times blog post on hospital visitation woes. Ridiculous. Is this stuff really happening in the U.S.? Our nation is becoming more progressive, but it is happening too slowly for my liking! But it is happening - on a happier note, the NY assembly voted to legalize same-sex marriage today. The "yes" votes included five republicans and several people who had voted "no" on a similar bill two years ago. "Flip-flopping" can be good - in fact, I find it admirable that these representatives listened to their constituents and their consciences.

The Plasticity of Gender...

...is yet another reason why outlawing civil gay marriage is stupid. Since my interest and passion for equal rights issues began, I had always wondered about the legality of transgendered marriages. This NY Times Op-Ed piece nicely lays out the confusing quagmire of legally defining gender. The inconsistencies among states is so silly. It seems to me that things would be so much simpler - not to mention fairer - if both our state and national governments would legally recognize marriages between any two consenting adults (more than two might be too problematic for the current laws to accommodate, but perhaps some day). In terms of marriage as a legal contract (which is all that a civil marriage is), the gender of those consenting adults is mutable, unimportant, and irrelevant. On a related subject, the relationship between those adults is also unimportant and irrelevant. People should be allowed to marry their sibling, cousin, etc. Just because some people think it's gross, immoral, or whatever doesn't mean it should be illegal!

The Art of Chris Jordan

I heard about this artist from my weekly DISCCRS e-mail. I sometimes have trouble appreciating art, but these are works that are both beautiful and make a powerful statement. Check out his recent work Gyre, and make sure you scroll all the way down to see the enlargements of the work. Note that this piece was created with 2.4 million pieces of plastic collected from the Pacific Ocean, equal to the number of POUNDS of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans EVERY HOUR. Also scroll down to see Shark Teeth and Tuna. Lastly, check out some of his earlier work here, including Oil Barrels. Wow.

Remembering Grandma

I meant to post a tribute to my Grandma a few weeks ago, although this would also be appropriate for Mother's Day! April 11, 2009 was 5 years since Grandma passed away on an Easter Sunday. I still miss her so much. She was such a warmhearted, generous, enthusiastic, loving woman who was so full of life and so happily involved in her family members' lives right up until the very end. She died just a couple weeks before my cousin's wedding, but I'm sure she was there in spirit. The above photo is her at my graduation from Ohio Wesleyan in May 2001. She and I shared a love of nature, the outdoors, and traveling, and I'm now getting more into her other two favorite hobbies of gardening and cooking. When I was in college and grad school she would send me letters carefully typed out using her trusty typewriter. They would often end with "work work work, study study study!" I could tell she was proud of the hard work I did, and I dedicated my dissertation to her memory. It was partly because of her generosity that I was able to go to the Galapagos in college; go to Iceland, Argentina, Chile, and Ireland in early grad school; and buy a house last year. Some of my happiest memories are family dinners and picnics at Grandma's house and trips with Grandma to Sanibel Island. When she died, we all ended up with so many things from her and her house that are constant reminders of those happy times. The cedar chest in my living room, the bottle of marbles in my kitchen, the quilt in my bedroom...all of this makes me think of you, Grandma, and how much I miss you! Hopefully some day I'll be as wonderful a grandma as she was.

Highlighted in today's Nature

This is good to hear. What would be the point of us ecologists and biologists doing what we do if that work would not be used in decision-making?

Obama revokes endangered species rule

Oh whoops I just realized you need an account to read this article. In a nutshell, there was a rule that loggers, developers, and the like did not need to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service experts before they altered habitat. Now that the rule has been revoked, such activities need to be approved by wildlife biologists to ensure that any federally listed species are not being harmed. I know what some of you skeptics are thinking. But it's not just about saving cute spotted owls. It's about preserving and maintaining ecosystem services, something that I'm developing a course about (it's gonna be awesome!). But that's for another blog post!

More Victories...

...in Maine and D.C. On a related note, around tax day I was listening The Story and they were interviewing a man named Clark Williams from California who is married with one daughter. According to Williams, his family paid $7000 extra in federal taxes this year due to the fact that their marriage is not recognized by the U.S. government. Last year it was $8000 extra. Williams says in the interview: "That's a lot of money to our family...it seems a violation of everything I love about our country". It seems so incredibly unfair. I actually admire Williams' honesty. If it were me, I'd probably just lie to the feds about my gender so I could file jointly with my spouse! Ridiculous. I sincerely hope that some day soon not only will states recognize such marriages, but our federal government will as well.

Backpacking last weekend

Last weekend I went backpacking for the first time in almost 5 years. Since moving here almost a year ago, I have barely stepped outside the Raleigh/Durham area to see the rest of NC, and so this trip to Pisgah National Forest was a great chance to see the mountains in the western part of the state. The trip was led by two Duke seniors who are part of an organization called Project WILD. This trip was a fundraiser for their program for high schoolers called "Step Into the Wild". On Friday April 24, we started out from Sam Knob (sort of near the center of this map) and hiked to a campsite near Devil's Courthouse, which is where this picture was taken:



I don't remember the exact route we took on Saturday, but we ended up near Shining Rock. This picture doesn't really do Shining Rock justice - it's a beautiful, large outcropping of snow-white quartz with granite intrusions (look at me trying to sound like I'm a geologist):





Even though it had been so long since I went backpacking, I think I did pretty well w/ carrying a pack, though I think mine was a lot lighter than our leaders' packs.



Overall, it was a great trip, and I'm really glad I decided to go and that grading could wait! We had absolutely perfect weather, and thus the many scenic mountainous views were especially gorgeous - see the rest of my photos (plus a couple from other trip participants) here.