Bottle

I came across this during a walk in the woods — a very old bottle, left forgotten on the floor of the forest, perhaps for decades. It's survived the change in temperature from the change in seasons intact, and has somehow accumulated a small amount of soil. (I can't imagine how. Could it have been washed in with rainwater, or melting snow?) Inside I found growing a small fern.

I'm fighting the temptation to go back and find this again and bring it home. But that seems wrong, somehow, not to leave it. It was never a part of nature, though it seems to have become a part of it.

Out, About

I've finally added new photos to my other blog, In The Back of Beyond, after just over a month. Between my back injury and the great deal of work to be done, I just hadn't had the chance to get out and have an adventure. (More on that particular adventure shortly.)

Pennies

I was too busy to get to the bank this afternoon, so I had to find one hundred pennies. (My seven-year-old will be learning about "taxation" this week in school.) We have an enormous glass bottle (it used to be filled with spring water) that most spare change is tossed into, sooner or later. I've been doing so for about ten years now, and the jar is just under half full.

(We had another that served the same purpose for many years — before we moved, we emptied it out and brought a bucket full of coins to a Coinstar machine that amounted to just over $400!)

As I was counting the pennies, I was struck by how insubstantial they felt between my fingers, as though I were counting some sort of unfamiliar foreign currency. It isn't as though I don't come across pennies from day-to-day — or, perhaps I don't, really. Or if I do, I don't take notice of them.

Estranged

I don't have a particularly close relationship with my mother, or with my mother's family — I haven't seen or spoken to them in many, many years. ("Estranged" is a good way to describe it.) I'd rather not get into the details (I'm not sure I'd even know where to begin), but suffice it to say there was no specific moment or incident that prompted this. There was never any anger or pain. And it's a conscious decision, one I am completely at peace with.

But I don't know what to tell my seven-year-old. Sooner or later, he's going to ask about my mother, and I've no idea what I'm going to say. I don't like to lie to him — he's bright and inquisitive, so I try to stumble through even the most complex of explanations to help him understand. He deserves that. But I couldn't possibly explain this to him.

GloFish

I know what kind of fish I'm keen to add to the aquarium, though, as soon as it's established — these are GloFish. I understand these are genetically modified zebrafish (or rather these are descendants of the original genetically modified fish), developed with the intention of indicating the presence of toxins in water. They are literally florescent, and glow under black light. They look really nifty under ordinary light, too.

Many years ago, my wife was talked into buying some transparent Glass Catfish with beautiful streaks of vivid color — only to learn, to her horror, that the fish had been injected with a small amount of dye to create that effect. Since then, we've been careful to avoid those kinds of fish, no matter how beautiful they appear.

(Thankfully, GloFish are born to brilliant color.)

The Life Aquatic

I've set up the aquarium this week, for the first time in two, perhaps three years. (There was some problem or other, back in the day, that caused all of the fish to die, and for whatever reason it's taken this long for me to take everything down, clean it thoroughly, and put it back together again.)

(Actually, I do know what the reason was — it's a lot of work!)

The last time I had to do this, which must have been ten or eleven years ago (not too long after we moved into the house), we set everything up, added a small number of fish, and hoped for the best. In the years since, with the accumulated wisdom of the Internet now available, I can go about this slightly better informed. (I had Internet access ten or eleven years ago, of course, but I don't recall thinking of it as a resource where I would expect to have any question answered. And I probably hadn't discovered Google yet.)

Now, for example, I know about the very necessary step of "cycling" a new aquarium, the process of establishing the biological colony that keeps the water healthy for aquatic life. I had read that I could encourage that along by the use of an additive — though I had also read that the results were often hit-and-miss, and it didn't seem to do much for the small (very small) number of fish I tried adding yesterday.

So now I'm trying again. I've discovered what I somehow missed in my research from the beginning of the week, and wish that I had known — a process popularly referred to as "fishless cycling" that seems to have caught on over the past several years. Without getting into too much detail, rather than slowly stocking a new tank with fish and hoping they survive long enough to encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria, you use small amounts of ammonia (to simulate fish waste) that will (if done with a certain amount of care) accelerate that process.

Part of this involves carefully monitoring the water quality, testing for levels of various compounds that indicate that the process is working as it should. This part appeals very much to the scientist in me — I have to fill these little glass vials with aquarium water, add several drops of various chemicals and compare the color of the results to a chart. So that's fun. (I only need to do this twice a day, but I've already done it twice in three hours.) I've been having my seven-year-old help me with this, adding the drops, shaking the vials, et cetera. He has a basic understanding of why we're doing this, but no idea what it all means. (Perhaps I'll set up a chart and set a goal to try and emphasize the scientific process for him.)

If only I had known, I would have started this process last week. (And I wouldn't have bought any fish, either.)

Yale

Yale University Press is abandoning its' distinctive logo, which was designed by the legendary Paul Rand. Most people probably won't recognize his name, but you probably see his work almost any day — Rand designed the logos for IBM, Westinghouse, ABC, and the UPS logo that was used for almost forty years. And many, many others too numerous to list here.

I'm not sure what it is I like about this logo (I'll bet only a designer of Rand's stature could have gotten away with it), but it certainly shows more imagination and distinction than just setting the word "Yale" in type.