Beside the Stream

Archive

Inside a Russian church

Published on November 6, 2008 in Travel. 2 Comments

There were lots of churches and monasteries in the cities between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The churches we saw had some common characteristics. The churches were built for standing, not sitting.

Three walls would be completely covered by frescoes depicting biblical scenes.

The ceilings were frescoed as well. About four or five feet above the floor, at the bottom of this photograph, a ribbon of stylized text runs around the room; below that the wall is plain, and easily repainted when it becomes grubby.

The interior columns are painted too.

I love the frescoes. I think every public place would be improved by wall-to-wall murals. But the fourth wall is a different thing entirely. It isn’t friendly cartoons of biblical themes.

Each church has an icon wall, where rows of icons are set in carved and gilded frames. The workmanship on the icon wall is often amazing. Here, the carved columns between each icon may have been made from individual trunks. The frame of the Madonna and child is often encrusted with semiprecious stones.

The arrangement of an icon wall is stylized, with certain types of icons in each row and a specified number of rows. The placement of each icon has meaning. If I could read this icon wall, I could tell you the name of the church.

Here is a Russian kissing an icon. It seemed as though the icons that were most regularly kissed were behind glass.

This young man crossed the rope to kiss this particular Madonna. She was under glass too, so she was probably expecting him.

Mule deer playing in the first snow

Published on November 5, 2008 in deer herd. 3 Comments

This is another set of dawn photos (love the Daylight Savings Time): it’s the first snow, and two young bucks are playing with their new antlers.

They engage,

push,

twist

try to disengage

and back off.

He asks, are you OK?

Once again, they engage,

and push.

Election Day

Published on November 4, 2008 in Celebration. 5 Comments

This is the dawn of election day near the continental divide. I was reading War and Peace and saw the sky aflame at 6:38AM; I ran out barefoot.

Two minutes later, at 6:40, everything looked different. That’s an election day dawn for you.

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—
nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name— the
still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

…

Walt Whitman

Time: Three months (Bye bye butterfly)

Published on November 3, 2008 in Insects and time. 2 Comments

This is the same little pink-edged sulphur butterfly I saw this summer near Junction Creek. Three months after I took the first set of photos, this little sulphur showed up.

These butterflies are supposed to be in Wisconsin, but here they are.

Or perhaps it is simply a clouded sulphur with a mistaken pink edge. Sulphurs overwinter as chrysalises, so this butterfly will die soon. Until then, though, the nectar is still as sweet.

Here he is on one blanketflower with a curled proboscis

and here he is on another, all plugged in.

Halloween II

Published on November 1, 2008 in Celebration. 3 Comments

Here’s me as Sarah Palin.

Bob went as Todd Palin, First Dude, in wool farm clothes from Vermont, a backwards baseball hat and a beer.

I had my patter down: You betcha, I’d say. I see Russia.

We won first prize.

Halloween

Published on October 31, 2008 in Celebration. 1 Comment

I have to do something for a costume party tonight. It’s easy for Bob, because he can wear his Dad’s Austrian clothes and look delectable. I’m reluctantly going as Sarah Palin: updo, designer dress, heels and a rifle.

Do you like dressing up? Did you have to get together a costume this year? (Are you going as Sarah too?)

Prairie Dogs and Grass I

Published on October 30, 2008 in what they eat. 1 Comment

Prairie dogs have a bad reputation, and this is why:

The foreground shows a nice stand of native grasses and flowers–see the last few purple asters of the season? A little prairie dog town starts where the grasses stop, and the land is stripped to nubbins of grass and bare earth. That big dark green plant growing on bare earth is an alien species of thistle that nothing eats, so it looks as though the prairie dogs remove good grasses and grow noxious weeds. No one wants these rodents around, and they’re easy to remove with poison.

Today prairie dog towns are as rare as old growth forests: they cover about 2% of their original range. They are (depending on the state) variously classified as threatened or “a species of special concern”. But since there are still thousands of prairie dogs and they make a mess of the landscape, they are typically not tolerated on private or public land. It’s the only rare species I know of that is routinely shot and poisoned.

Cute!

Meanwhile, every rancher knows that all grass is not created equal. Young, tender growth is higher in protein than tall grass. Buffalo and antelope graze preferentially on prairie dog towns because the clipped grass in prairie dog towns provides higher quality feed. From the 1976 on, studies show that cattle grazing on prairie dog towns gain weight at appropriate rates.

This is because the amount of vegetation grown on an acre of land is not fixed. There is not x amount of grass that can be divided up by the grazers (so more prairie dogs mean less grass for cattle). Prairie dogs increase the production of grasses and leafy plants by increasing soil moisture, increasing the amount of organic matter mixed into the soil, and by keeping the area fertilized and clipped.

When prairie dogs engineer the landscape, the land’s net primary productivity (roughly the mass of plants grown per acre per year) increases. Prairie dogs alter local hydrology in ways that keep more water on the land, increasing soil moisture. Even though it looks like the prairie dogs ate everything, the land itself is more productive so their net impact is close to zero. This has been known for 35 years–more than a generation–and these studies have been replicated time and again. But ranchers say, that’s old research,

and the poisoning continues.

Prairie dogs are ambidexterous

Published on October 29, 2008 in what they eat. 3 Comments

I spent some time in a prairie dog towns both Monday and Wednesday, and the whole time I was there a sentinel dog kept his eye on me.

This prairie dog was looking out of the hole that was closest to me. It barely moved the whole time I was there–both times. The prairie dogs that came out of their holes were the ones that were farthest from me.

This shows the general situation: the prairie dogs are putting on fat for winter, and they are stuffing food into their mouths as fast as they can. These are photos of three different prairie dogs over two days.

Here we have a left hand stuffing food in

right hand at work

and again a left handed assist.

One more time: a right handed rodent,

a left handed rodent,

and a left handed rodent again.

They don’t have opposable thumbs, but they sure do use their hands.

Some things are easier than others

Published on October 28, 2008 in Travel. 8 Comments

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that interiors are much easier to photograph than prairie dogs. I took and sorted nearly 200 photos of prairie dogs yesterday and I’m sorry to say that I have very little to show for it. I’m afraid those dogs are going to have to get accustomed to me before they’ll give me some decent photos, so I’m doing another post on Catherine Palace.

Catherine I originally built the palace and Elizabeth, her daughter, expanded and gilded it. Catherine the Great, or Catherine II, redecorated one wing in the Neo-Palladium style.

This dining room is the first Neo-Palladium room I’ve ever been in; it’s done in pistachio and pink. It’s like being inside a jewel box.

The original palace interior featured countless gilded bare-breasted babes and babies. When Catherine the Great redecorated, she included scantily draped youths.

This is bas-relief for an empress. You might say the whole thing is a tad overdone, but the room next door is

perfection. It’s rose, antique white, and mahogany.

It’s one of the loveliest rooms I’ve ever seen. It’s bold and restful in the same breath.

And finally, this grand staircase was redecorated in the 1800s; the original mahogany banisters were replaced with white marble. (Most people paint when they want to lighten an interior, but not the Tsars.)

(This is not my photograph.) And here in the heart of the Russian empire you have the solution to the problem of what to do with those big Imari vases, plates and jars.

You’d probably need two high stepladders and some planks to dust them, but if you’re a Tsar, well… that’d be the very least of your worries.

A prairie dog

Published on October 27, 2008 in what they eat. 4 Comments

This prairie dog was sitting in front of his hole this morning. I liked the way he was eating that piece of greenery. I’ll have more on them this week… but all I have today is this photograph. Have a nice Monday!!