prisms and sampling and systems oh my!

I have to admit that this grad school thing isn't all happiness and light. This week has been a tough one to get through, and as I write this, I'm in the UNH Library at 10pm trying to finish a rough draft of a paper on PCBs for my class tomorrow morning.

I'm currently working on 4 group projects:

• The PCB paper, which is really more individual than anything else, but is big.
• The Plot sampling project (which we took data for on Sunday) which involves a lot of data calculation, and a group-written paper.
• The Prism sampling project (which we took data for on Monday) which involves a lot of data calculation and a group presentation.
• The State of The Systems Project on the Long Island Sound, which has 3 papers, 2 presentations and a whole lotta work.

I have to admit that I don't really like group projects, so having four to tackle at once has been a... learning experience. I am getting a hang of the research methods that I will need to use, and the program which organizes all of those references, called RefWorks is my best friend as of late. But I still don't like communicating only over email, and being unclear about what direction we should be heading in.

I'm behind this week because of the data collection for the plot/prism sampling taking 2 days instead of one. I spent all day today and yesterday trying to catch up with my other assignments, but I think I will still end up having work to finish on Thursday night. I need to finish this draft this evening though, because it is due tomorrow morning. Wish me luck!

Something tells me

Last Thursday, I didn't stay up with Glickin & Caroline as usual. I was feeling somehow that I wanted to go home. The sky was clouding over and getting colder, and I had been very tired all day. I needed my own warm bed for a nap. I decided to use the gas to go home anyway, since it had been a very long day.

On the way back, as the sun was setting a beautiful crimson behind me, I looked ahead at a pink sky being lit up by sunset. To my shock, on a pink background, there was a rainbow.

Every once and a while I stop to think about the possibility of having a sixth sense, or the possibility that I can be in the right place at the right time so often.

Mike, who was also on his way back home, missed this sight completely, by only 5 or 10 minutes. While it was probably not the safest thing in the world to do, I had to take a picture of this, because I have *never* seen a rainbow and a sunset at the same time. Beautiful.

This is, however, the second rainbow I've seen since coming to Antioch. Every once and a while I get reminded that I am doing the right thing.

The rainbow and the nap were definitely worth the gas.

Surviors

Disease is something that every history class learns about sooner or later. The Plague, the Great Flu Epidemic, Malaria, Yellow Fever and the like. Each pose significant risk, especially during the time period in which they ravaged the populations.

Tree diseases are similar in that some every person studying history should have heard of at least once; like Dutch Elm Disease.

My Community Ecology teacher pointed an American Elm tree out to us on one of our first field trips to putney. It had a trunk diameter of about 12" and was about 70% healthy. "This," he said, "Is actually an American Elm - but it is rare to see one without disease present. They were once the dominant hardwood around here, but were almost completely destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease."

Dutch Elm Disease is a fungal disease that was accidentally introduced to the United States in 1931, carried over in shipments of Elm from England to be used in furniture factories. The Elm Beetle picks up the fungus and spreads it to other trees, and ajacent trees can spread it to others by their shared roots. This once majestic tree was almost wiped out from our want of pretty furniture.

What's interesting is that I never thought I'd see another Elm that wasn't in a park or on a city street. But today when we did our prism sampling for community ecology, we found two - LARGE ones!

Our immediate first thought was, "What on earth kind of tree is that?!" followed by, "That can't be an elm... can it?"

Silly how delightful I felt knowing that we just found a rare species in the middle of the woods, in its natural habitat - but it was also that they were still hanging on, healthy, and that they would probably come back, despite our meddling. Awesome.