Congratulations, Emily!

Congratulations, Emily, for being accepted to study abroad next fall at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand! Of course, Mom and I will have to visit! :)

Congratulations, Brian!

Congratulations, Brian, for being inducted into two honor societies at Colby College!

Phi Beta Kappa (wiki) is the honor society for the arts and sciences. It is the oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honor society in the U.S.

Sigma Pi Sigma (wiki) is the honor society for physics.

Brian will graduate next month with a bachelor of arts degree in computer science, and minors in mathematics and physics.

Well done, Brian!

Clayton Burnham

Clayton Burnham (Arthur Clayton Burnham, Jr.) died on April 12, 2008. Nancy, Laura and I went to the calling hours yesterday. Bill, Donna, Jason, Pager and I went to the funeral today. (Nancy and Laura are out of town today for a college visit. Beth and Jerry are away on vacation.)

Clayton was the second husband of my aunt, Harriet (Gould) (Karr) Burnham. Harriet and my mother, Lois (Gould) Putnam (d. 1999), were sisters.

Clayton was born in Connecticut in 1919. He married Frances May Flanders of Johnson in 1943, and lived most of his life in Jericho. My recollection is that Frances and Harriet's first husband, Quentin ("Red") Karr, Sr., died on the same day. Harriet and Clayton did not know each other at the time. None of us on this side of the family knew Clayton at the time. But Harriet and Clayton had mutual friends who knew that they were both lonely, and who introduced them to each other. Clayton and Harriet married in 1994, and they had many happy years together.

Clayton was a wonderful man. He was kind and quiet, with a great sense of humor. I remember that he always had a twinkle in his eye. He never complained, even when he had health problems late in life. He was loved by everyone who knew him, and he will be missed.

Harriet and all four of her children (Kareen, Linda, Mary Jean and Quent) were at the funeral, as well as Clayton's only child (Eric). I caught up with relatives and friends that I haven't seen in a long time, and made new friends. It is sad that it takes a funeral to do so.

Kareen's husband, Rev. Jim Perry, performed the funeral service today.

For reference, the obituary is in the Burlington Free Press on 4/16/08. (Searching the online obituaries is easier if you know the name and date of publication.)

Laura and the Fisher Cat

Last night Laura was awakened by a blood-curdling animal sound outside her window. Investigation revealed a dark brown cat-like animal within 10 feet of the house. I am sure it was a fisher cat. Fisher cats (or just fishers to most people outside New England) make a most distinctive sound: "Fishers are also known for one of their calls, which is often said to sound like a child screaming, and can be mistaken for someone in dire need of help."

Fisher cats are not uncommon at all now in Vermont, but I do not remember ever hearing about them when I was growing up on the farm. There are a number of animal species that are common in Vermont now, but that were rare or nonexistent when I was growing up. And I cannot think of a single animal species that was common in Vermont when I was growing up that is not still common. Some people say the environment is going to hell in a handbasket, but they must be using different evidence.

Following are some examples that come to mind. Please feel free to add your thoughts, examples or counter-examples in the comments. "Then" refers to growing up on the farm in the 1960s and 1970s, five miles from where we live now.

Bald eagles – Then: Not present at all. Now: Not uncommon along rivers and lakes. I have seen several.

Bears – Then: Uncommon. People saw bears only in the deep woods. Now: Not uncommon at all. I still have not seen one in Vermont, but many people do. Emily and Nancy saw one crossing our front yard a few years ago.

Beavers – Then: Rare. Now: Not uncommon at all. I have seen them in the Lamoille River and at Green River Reservoir. Sometimes a nuisance.

Bluebirds – Then: Very rare. I think Mother thought she saw one once or twice, and was ecstatic. Now: Moderately common. We have had some nest in our backyard on occasion. I’ve heard people also say that cardinals are more common now, although I’m not enough of a birdwatcher to opine on the subject.

Catamounts – Then: Not present at all. Long thought extinct in this part of the country. Of course, they used to be common, otherwise they would not be the mascot for UVM sports teams. Now: There are numerous unconfirmed sightings reported in the press. I have not seen one myself.

Coyotes – Then: Not present at all. Now: Very common. Can frequently hear them at night in the spring and summer. Have occasionally seen them, even in our backyard, in spite of their shyness. Somewhat of a problem with eating domestic pets such as cats.

Fisher cats – Then: Never heard of them. Now: Hear about them frequently, especially about them eating domestic pets such as cats. Roger Allen has trapped several.

Loons – Then: Not present at all. Now: Very common on Green River Reservoir. I have seen them there and at Lake Carmi.

Moose – Then: Not present at all. Now: Very common. I have seen several. There is a hunting season. People are not infrequently killed in traffic collisions.

Peregrine falcons – Then: Not present at all. Now: Several nesting pairs in Smugglers Notch each year (nearby hiking trails are closed in the spring). They also like to live on skyscrapers in cities. So much for needing wild habitat.

Turkeys – Then: Not present at all. Now: Very common. We have seen them in our backyard. There is a hunting season.

Why are more animal species present now? It is mostly because the forest has returned. Vermont was originally forested, but the early settlers cut the trees down for potash. Vermont remained mostly open through the sheep era and the early dairy era, but the forest has begun to return in the last century. Vermont is about 5.9 million acres. In 1910 Vermont had 4 million acres of cropland and pastureland. In other words, Vermont was 68% open land. In 2002, the latest Census of Agriculture, Vermont had only 650,000 acres of cropland and pastureland--only 11% open land. A small portion of that open land was developed, but most of it reverted to forest. (For more info, click here and also see the first comment on this post.)

About that fisher cat last night...it did not seem too concerned by humans in the house. It stayed around a short while, even after Laura turned on the outside lights, and eventually wandered off.

Feynman on Yankee ACA Blog

Sorry for the lack of posts recently; I've been busy at work. Among other things at work, I have been more active in posting to my work blog (the Yankee ACA Blog). I even found a reason to put up three posts about Richard Feynman!

Surely You're Joking! (*)
More Feynman
What is science?

*Note the posting date—a little joke of my own.

There is one other recent post on the work blog that may be of personal interest:

This Milk Problem

The 1937 booklet described in this post is something that Pager gave me years ago. I have found it most interesting. The author of the booklet was Harry Varney, a well-known Vermont agricultural economist. Pager heard Mr. Varney speak a time or two.

Sometimes it helps to have a sense of history. When one thinks about the present in relation to the past, we often surprised in two ways: First, problems that we think are new (e.g., "this milk problem") are sometimes the same old problem that has existed for a long time. Second, things that we think have never changed may, in fact, have been greatly different in the past (e.g., the amount of open space in Vermont). The next post will discuss an example of the latter.

Naples

Last week I had a Farm Credit meeting in Naples, Florida. Tough duty, but someone has to do it. We really were in meetings most of the time, but we had a free afternoon on Monday 2/11. Most of the group played golf, but three of us went on a Segway tour of historic downtown Naples. Great fun! Left to right are Bob Egerton of CoBank, me and Doug Stark of Farm Credit Services of America:

The weather was beautiful and the beaches were uncrowded:

The water was a balmy 72 degrees F:

I was the only one to put my feet in the water:

Well, I guess these guys put their feet in the water, too...

I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

In a comment to an earlier post, I used the phrase: "I'm shocked, shocked."

Does anyone know which classic movie that phrase comes from?

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In a comment on an earlier post, Emily says: "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions a theory about our reality being just a computer simulation."

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, it is known that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. Unfortunately no one knows what the Ultimate Question is. Earth was designed as a computer to find out what the Ultimate Question is. Alas, Earth is destroyed by the Vogons—to make way for an interstellar bypass—five minutes before the calculation is complete. And that's just the beginning of this rich, complicated story.

Another part of the story that involves interesting computations is the spaceship Heart of Gold, where the central computational area consists of an Italian restaurant. Calculations are done according to Bistromathics ("the most powerful computational force known to parascience") and the spaceship is powered by the Bistromathic Drive.

Brian and Emily, you are more familiar with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than I am; do I have that about right?

There's more than one flavor to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy story. There's the radio version, the television version, the book version, the movie version and the computer game. And they are all slightly different! Kinda like the different versions of The Phantom of the Opera story, except that at least in that instance the different versions came from different people. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, most of the various versions all came from the fertile mind of Douglas Adams. (Even the movie, which was released in 2005, after Adams died in 2001, was based on screenplay begun by Adams.)

The most widely known version of the story is the book version, which consists of a "trilogy" of five books:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Mostly Harmless

Plus there was another book, The Salmon of Doubt, published after Adams died, which may have been intended as the sixth book in the series.

CORRECTION: See the comments for a correction from Brian. I had my spaceships wrong.

UPDATE 10/06/10: I finally read The Salmon of Doubt. See this blog post.

Phantom of the Opera

Are any readers of this blog familiar with the story of The Phantom of the Opera? I recently listened to an audio version of the original novel (1911), and that prompted me to also watch the movie (2004) and listen to the soundtrack of the musical (1986). Brian and I saw the musical in Milwaukee in 2000.

I guess it is a story that grows on you. And I'm not the only one. According to Wikipedia, the musical alone "is the highest-grossing entertainment event of all time."

For all of that, I liked the novel best. The movie is based on the musical, so they are similar to each other. The novel is much more complex than either. The character of the Phantom, for example, is much more complex and interesting in the novel. And there are several characters in the novel that are completely missing from the musical and the movie, such as Raoul's older brother and the Persian.

Two more comments for this post.

First, the line "keep your hand at the level of your eyes" is used several times in all three works, but it's not clear in the movie, for example, what it means. The novel clearly explains that it is to defend against the Phantom's weapon, the Punjab lasso. The instruction is to keep your arm in front of you, bent at the elbow with the hand up and at the level of your eyes. It is as if you were holding a handgun pointed vertically, ready to bring it down and fire when a target appears. (In the novel, Raoul initially holds a gun in this manner, until his arm tires of holding the unnecessary weight of the gun.) If the lasso is thrown, it will go around both your neck and your arm, allowing you to free yourself instead of being strangled.

Second, the opera building itself is more imposing and interesting in the novel. It is described as 17 stories above ground and 5 stories below ground. To house all of the workers described in the novel, including a stable of horses, it must have been as large as a city block. The opera building in the movie does not seem this grand.

The novel is based on this actual building. Marion, have you visited this building? Is it grand? Is that part of Paris really over an underground lake? Laura, when you visit Paris next summer, perhaps you will be able to see the Paris Opera. If you include that in your itinerary, I recommend that you read the novel first. And then read about the author, Gaston Leroux. Some of the things he did in his lifetime help explain features of the building he describes in the novel (e.g., the prison previously used by the Paris Commune).

Does anyone else have a favorite aspect of this story?

UPDATE: I have been referring to the original novel as being published in 1911, but that was when it was translated into English. It was published in French in serial form in 1909-1910. Click here for a free online English translation of the original novel.

Vermont Economic Conference

I attended the annual Vermont Economic Outlook Conference in Burlington on Friday. Brian and Emily--I thought you would be interested to know that one of the speakers was a Colby grad and one of the speakers was a Middlebury grad. The Middlebury grad was Governor Jim Douglas. The Colby grad was Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Snowshoeing 1/5

Nancy and I went snowshoeing yesterday with the Duchaceks, up behind their house. Couldn't persuade Allie and Laura to go.

The temperature was just below freezing, quite pleasant. Here is an interesting "snow rope" we saw:

We saw some "rubbings" where deer had rubbed their antlers against the trees to scrape off the velvet. (Click to enlarge picture.) There was about 2 feet of snow in the woods.

New Years 2008

What is a Yankee? (Besides a baseball player or an ag banker?) Click here for one answer. I remember reading this definition in the Burlington Free Press when I was a kid.

This is what was left of Elaine's apple/cranberry pie after breakfast on this New Years Day:

It was delicious!

(The title of the post that I linked to above -- It's Yankees All The Way Down -- is a play on words from a story told by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time.)

Happy New Years, everyone!