Johann wrote the following poem last year. When he recited it at the art fair for our homeschooling group a number of people thought he was reciting his favorite poem of a well-known poet, not his own work. One mom even said it gave her goosebumps. I convinced him to submit it to Stone Soup magazine. He made it past the first cut. The editor said that was the top 5% of all submissions worldwide for the past year. Considering that they receive hundreds of submissions every week, I thought that was quite an accomplishment in and of itself.
The editor said that if they felt they could use it, they would publish it. Unfortunately, this time they couldn’t fit it into the magazine. Understandably, Johann was very disappointed, but it’s still an excellent poem. Since many of you have heard us talking about it, we thought you’d like to read it and judge for yourselves. I’m hoping Johann will keep trying with new writings and have better luck next time.
The Oak
by Johann Heupel
Night, the dead of night.
The owl hoots from his high perch on the pine.
There is the oak.
He is the oldest tree in these woods.
“Who made these woods?” you ask.
The oak will tell you.
He knows 2,000 years of history and more.
He will tell you no man owns these woods.
The woods are free – free as the nightingale.
And that is the secret of life.
???
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Tammy and I figured out a potentially cheap way to make our own little plankton tow which we could use to make monthly or biweekly plankton community surveys. Real
plankton tow nets run $150+ for a small one (I’m hoping we can “buy” one off a pair of retiring professors). We converted a small meshed carbon filter bag for an aquarium to use a hanger section to hold it open. Makes a 3″ diameter, 12″ long net. We tested it briefly this afternoon. The results? Well for $5 it worked decently. We got a few critters, including one copepod, three gastropod veliger larvae, three naupliar crustacean larvae and this mystery creature.
Unfortunately the photos of the other creatures did not turn out very well.
Juvenile (not larval) brittle star of some sort? Although it looks like it, brittle stars have 5 arms…this has 7 maybe 8.
A small or juvenile pycnogonid (sea spider)? Algae? Pollen? ????
This critter has a diameter of under 0.5mm (it’s diameter is less than that of a 0.5mm mechanical pencil lead — very precise yes?) and this shot was 45x through the home microscope, using extension tubes to jerry rig a system to mount the camera to the lens. I’ll have to see about borrowing one of the eyepieces from the school scopes and see if I can get a slightly better result using their probably better optics.
Last week we went to Providence for two science conferences. I had fun. I sat in on some really neat talks. One was about lobster larvae and another was about Alaskan oyster farming. I ate mussels. I worked behind the front desk. We went to the beach party and had fun playing all the games and contests. I got a special award for helping. I made lots of friends.
The End.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Last week was very busy for us here. I volunteered to help out one of the people at the University who was in charge of organizing and putting on the NSA conference and the Benthic Ecology Meeting which were held back to back in Providence. Ostensibly I was supposed to be there primarily for IT support, but ended up helping with a variety tasks from stuffing bags helping people overcome issues with their presentations, to making lunch runs. Truth be told it was exhausting, but very fun – of course now I am paying the price for missing a week of school and school work…but it was worth it.
The organizer of the conferences knows Johann’s love of science and was very generous, providing Johann and Tammy with passes to get into the event and attend talks. As a family we attended a number of the talks, but the whole family ended up volunteering behind the scenes, stuffing programs and helping hand out newsletters, sell raffle tickets, etc… On Thursday the closing NSA evening event and opening Benthic Ecology Meeting event was a viewing of the IMAX movie Volcanoes of the Deep Sea
with opening introduction by NSA member and deep sea biologist Richard Lutz. Richard also had a 20 minute question and answer period afterwords with several questions from the few kids in the audience including a pair of insightful questions from Johann.
We all had great fun, especially meeting some of the wonderful people involved in the meeting and attending it including Kathy Johnston, Richard Lutz, Sammy Ray, Roger Mann, Ken Chew and many, many others.
Johann and Tammy were invited back by everyone to the Saturday evening event to close the Benthic Ecology Meeting – a Beach Party in the hotel ballroom. Johann had a blast with playing volleyball with all the scientists and grad students. It was great fun and hilarious to watch the beach balls fliying into the chandeliers. (My legs are still killing me from all the running and diving.) They also had “Benthic Twister”, limbo contests, a Hawaiian shirt contest and a hula hoop contest. Who knew Tammy could hula hoop for hours straight?!
The highlight of the evening however for Johann was his receiving a certificate of appreciation and participation from the organizer. He had a photo taken with all the volunteers as he received his certificate. We will hopefully be able to get a copy of the photo soon to post. The certificate is now going up over his study desk. As one of the PhD students said “Wow, he’s gonna have a better C.V. by the time he’s in high school than I have now!” Heck he’s gonna have a better one than I do!!
There is a meme out there for naming women scientists. Well with Johann’s scientists cards and his love of science history as well as science, we felt like playing along. So here are some of the scientists that we came up with, most of them off the top of our heads:
While most of these we came up with without resources, it helped for some of them that Johann has his “Scientist Trading Cards” list, which all of these ladies are on. I figure his lists are the equivalent to “class notes” for us. When we have time maybe we can do a part two… that and go back and hyperlink these to bio pages and lab pages. ed. Done!
Oh and for the record Penny Boston and Diana Northup have some of the coolest named study subjects (at least for Johann): Snottites and phlegm balls.
S’not funny. That’s what they study… no really.
