Musings from Mark

I am back from Oregon–certainly the best week I have had since graduating from Carleton. I have many stories, most of which you can read here. There are four photo pages in total, but you can find links to the others on the first page. I also added a photo essay with winter pictures taken in the Cities, which you can find here.

Additionally, I changed my homepage, updated my contact information, and added some photos from my New York trip to my photos of the day page. If these pages don’t appear different than when you last saw them, try the refresh button.

I’m headed to Oregon tomorrow to check out Oregon State and it’s department of Biological and Ecological Engineering. Flying out, staying four days at OSU, spending a couple of days with cousin Emma and aunt Kathy, then catching Amtrak in Eugene for the 36-hour train ride back to Minneapolis

In the past few weeks I have:

-rebuilt Jean’s computer after her hard drive failed
-helped said person with a jigsaw puzzle while enjoying some quality time with my godmother that has been hard to come by of late
-walked eight miles on river ice
-examined a group of large (cat?)fish through clear windows in said ice
-climbed a tree to watch a sunset at -25 windchill
-produced 14 DVD’s containing the past 2 1/2 years of home video
-helped Chris to construct new walls in the Lightsmith building
-dropped a 2×4 on Chris’s head while constructing said walls
-packaged well over 10,000 little cartons of homeopathic lozenges into ~50 large boxes
-transcribed a number of channelings
-attended a number of channelings
-asked the Earth Mother for her take on genetic engineering and hydrogen production
-attended a great concert with musician/stand-up comic Cheryl Wheeler and equally-talented musician Kenny White
-and many other things.

My blog should spring back to life with a report of my Oregon trip, though it is somewhat doubtful that I will be able to post until I after I return on March 6. Hopefully I will find time and motivation then to put up some new photo essays with New York, Winter Carnival, and Oregon pictures….

Until today, there remained one last corner of the Lightsmith building that has not been touched by its new owners: the old coal and oil storage room behind the boiler room. Chris wants to clean up the area, paint it white, and put in shelves for storage to take up some of the stuff that is overflowing the other storage areas.

So this morning we started hauling stuff out–old rotten boards, burned out lightbulbs, a moldy drinking fountain, and other forgotten items–all covered with coal dust and looking like they had been through several floods (which may well be true, as the area used to leak water before Chris sealed the holes). Then I took a wire brush to the concrete walls, setting loose so much dust that I was spitting black goo in a few minutes–after which we bought respirators and breathed much easier. As of tonight we have all of the worst dust and junk out, and we are ready to paint the walls tomorrow.

I spent yesterday working on my application to Oregon State’s Biological and Ecological Engineering program. I remain much more excited about bioenergy than I ever was about ecology, but I won’t know for sure if I want it as a career until I see what these folks do day-to-day, sitting in front of computers or microscopes.

It is my tradition to go for a walk on the coldest night of the year. Last night, at about -12 here in the city, may have been such a night. Or there may yet be colder days coming. In any case, I bundled up and set off down Annapolis St. last night, heading for a park with many large trees where I could see the close conjunction of Mars and the moon. From there I wandered down to the High Bridge and looked out over the lights of St. Paul from 160 feet above the river. All in all about two hours of enjoying the cold stillness, or at least as much stillness as can ever be found with 500,000 people moseying about in their little heated compartments on wheels.

I’m headed to a club tonight to hear Aaron’s band and meet up with Andy and Annaka (and perhaps other Alumni whose names begin with A).

I remain unemployed and will remain so for the immediate future. In the interim, I am working for my mom and for Robert Cohanim, producer of a very successful line of homeopathic lozenges including Stress Mints. Turns out his packing staff is gone for the next few weeks, and he is paying me better than any wage I have yet earned to fold boxes, load them with lozenges, and ship them off. Not something I would want to do as a career, of course, but for now I don’t mind sitting in a spacious, mint-smelling, plant-filled warehouse with giant windows overlooking several railroads and downtown St. Paul.

Turns out my car doesn’t like cold. Very poor idling, and sometimes fails to start after it has been running for a short time. Also seems to have developed a coolant leak. So I am taking it to a Subaru shop on Monday to spend all of the money I just earned.

Coldest weather of the season this weekend – 13 below tonight and 14 below tomorrow night with a high of -1 tomorrow. A good time to get out and feel the crisp air…

For the past three years or so I have been expecting to pursue a career in ecology–this despite the fact that I am not particularly excited about most ecological research. I do love the birds and other creatures, but I find that an objective study of them takes away from my appreciation of nature. I’m sure I would enjoy using radio telemetry to track bird migrations and ultimately contribute to the conservation of species, but it lacks a certain pressing importance and intellectual challenge that I would prefer. The birds will be fine if we stop destroying their habitats, and if we continue our current course no amount of ecological research will save them.

So I began to think how I could use biology to address more pressing concerns, especially alternative energy. The energy reaching the earth from the sun in one hour could power all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year, so solar power is promising if only we could find a cheap and efficient way to turn sunlight into energy. Plants do this everyday through photosynthesis. At present the best we can do is burn the plants after the growing season ends, but I began to wonder if we could engineer plants to produce useful energy throughout their life cycle–rather like the photosynthetic equivalent of milking a cow. As it turns out, it is conceptually possible to insert a hydrogenase (an enzyme capable of making hydrogen from protons and electrons) into the photosynthetic apparatus of bacteria or algae. I envision future solar panels filled with cyanobacteria and water that churn out hydrogen with virtually no up-front energy investment or expense.

As it turns out, quite a few people are working on this, and so far light-to-hydrogen efficiencies have not exceeded 1%, but the future looks promising. In any case, I am currently much more excited about this than about ecology, so I am looking into graduate programs in this area.

Several holidays have come and gone since my last post. All went well and were filled with family reconnections, many thoughtful gifts, and tasty food of all types. I am still unemployed. I returned to Carleton for the first time since graduation this past weekend. I walked the entire Arb, reunited with my best Carleton friends at a midwinter bonfire on an oddly warm night, discussed hydrogen photobiosynthesis enthusiastically with Susan Singer, ate waffles at the new waffle bar, and otherwise had a great time at a place that I now miss following my entry into the “real world.”

Much has happened in the 26 days since my last post – 1150 mile drive home from Pinedale, Thanksgiving celebrated with homegrown vegetables and organic chicken, much wood splitting, car purchase (Subaru Forester), 1200 mile drive to Ithaca, NY with a stop at Joe’s apartment in Chicago, walks around Ithaca’s beautiful waterfalls, purchase and subsequent enjoyment of expensive and tasty beers with Steve, visits with Cornell students and professors, birding at the Lab of Ornithology, drive to Syracuse on icy roads to visit Becky, hot tub soak under freezing rain, more waterfalls, 1100 mile drive to St. Paul….

….which is a poor summary of the last month’s events, but this blog is something like a diary, and I have never been able to keep a diary going for more than three months at a time. I expect my blog posts will remain relatively infrequent unless I end up lonely in a place like Pinedale again.

For now I remain unemployed, and I am simultaneously looking for jobs and grad school opportunities.

My last weekend in Pinedale…what to do? Part of my time was occupied with grad school application work, but that still left many hours.

Saturday: Borrowed Ryan’s “Ishmael” book and drove back to Granite Hot Springs for a nice long soak-and-read. Almost finished the book in about four hours – a good story if a bit dated. No new hot spring acquaintances – just a young couple who obviously felt I was disrupting their hot springs solitude.

Sunday: Ryan and Nick decided that we should celebrate my leaving with a few rounds of Beer Pong. So they bought a mini-keg of Heineken, some margarita mix, 20 dixie cups, and two ping pong balls. The premise of beer pong is quite simple: if you manage to land a ping pong ball in one of your opponent’s cups, they must then drink that cup’s alcoholic contents. The night ended with all four of us rather tipsy and quite incapable of hitting small cups with ping pong balls. After that it was no longer beer pong, just beer.

Monday: Worked on my Cornell application in the morning, then drove up to the Green River Lakes with Ryan for a hike to the Clear Creek Natural Bridge (a place I had visited once before on my Osborn Mountain hike). ~9-10 miles round trip, so we got back to the car just as darkness became complete. I may post a few pictures if I have time in my upcoming packing frenzy.

I plan on leaving Thursday morning and arriving in Minnesota Friday night. So will end my Pinedale adventure, unless I sign on for the Snowshoe Hare surveys this winter.

Having completed the areas mowed this year, we set out to draw GPS polygons around areas mowed in 2005. It was sometimes hard to find the borders of the old mowings, especially where the sagebrush is naturally short or absent, but sagebrush grows very slowly (3-4 foot tall sagebrush may be 60-80 years old) so in most areas we had no problems. Riding through 3-foot tall sagebrush between mowings is a wee bit tricky. One large shrub nearly tipped me backwards before I came down on top of it with no wheels firmly on the ground.

I saw more jackrabbits today – at least ten – than I have in my whole life. These beautiful creatures are quite conspicuous at the moment as they are turning white for the winter but do not yet have snow for camouflage.

Bouncing around on sagebrush stumps and badger holes all day left me with a sore butt and a flat tire. We plan on fixing the tire (but unfortunately not the butt) and returning tomorrow to finish the project.

Turns out the Jardine Juniper is only 1500 years old, not 3200 as was once believed. Still a mighty old tree though