Autumns of the past, present and future (10/27/2022)

I somehow enjoy autumn, fall or whatever you call it. I prefer the British word autumn over the harsher word fall that they use is this country. I understand a lot the leaves must fall, and that juxtaposition is not lost on me; but still, the word autumn sounds so nice.

As a kid I never experienced anything like autumn, or at least I don’t remember it, growing up in the tropics. I know that as a two-year-old I must have spent a change of seasons in Antwerp, Belgium, where we lived for a year. I remember seeing pictures of me in the snow, but I do know that we were back in the tropics before fall arrived the next year because my brother was born in early December. You were not allowed to fly when heavily pregnant back then (air pressure changes would make the baby pop out in the 1950s), and from what I know, we arrived back on our tropical island around August or September. Actually, my brother was born on December 5th which is Sinter Klaas (Saint Nicolas’ birthday) for us Dutch folks and that was a bitter disappointment to me. I had asked the good old wise guy for a sister, and he had delivered a brother to the hospital, or at least that was what my father told me. That is still the first memory I have; I was three and a half years old.

Our vacations, a few months back to the Netherlands every four years, never coincided with autumn; I think. Although I do remember briefly going to first grade in Terbregge, a suburb of Rotterdam, during our first vacation. This must have been in September, so I guess, theoretically it was fall in Holland. My luck, I came down with mononucleosis or kissing disease, a six-year-old kissing? Obviously, it was a vacation to forget! Moreover, I remember running home after school, to my grandmother’s home, where we were staying that vacation, and pooping in my pants; I had to go so badly. Yup, forget that vacation.

After that though, I do not remember any autumn visits to the Netherlands until I moved there after my 16th birthday. I lived with my aunt and four cousins that first autumn and I remember that she rented a cabin on or near the Veluwe in the center of the Netherlands. De Veluwe is a natural area that has a sandier soil and consist of woods and heather. Part of it is a National Park or a nature preserve. I remember walking through the woods often alone, (my cousins were not outdoorsy) during that week looking over fields of blooming heather. It was foggy at times and for the first time I heard the call of the coocoo. It was absolutely magical and amazing for a lonely, 16-year-old introvert who had just arrived from the tropics where it was always summer and was now temporarily living with five females (women and girls).

Autumn, a time of death, recycling, eventual rebirth, Halloween, the rutting (breeding) of deer, bucks will shed their horns (a.k.a. racks) to build back larger and better, even our elections, you get the idea (hopefully not the death of democracy as we know it). Farmers are harvesting, the grapes are coming into the wineries (ah, Beaujolai), the first beers are being brewed from the fresh grains (what I knew as Bock Bier in Holland, although it was usually released after the New Year). It is a mystical time and a time of hope, rebirth around the corner.

Walking through the woods behind our home I notice that the colors are more intense, partially because of the lower sun angle, and partially because of the changing leave colors. I don’t think we have seen the sun in three or four days now. It has been a bit dreary, but that makes it even more fall-like with temperatures in the low 60s (around 15 degrees C). In my days in the Netherlands this was the time for foggy days.

The seasons, the diurnal fluxes (day and night) and even the differences in day length between summer and winter are fascinating to me. This is what triggers autumn. Some of these triggers will probably never change, while seasons may change over or maybe even within generations, partially as a result of climate change. Sitting here writing this, I come to remember my college plant physiology courses where I learned about the mechanism of day length or better night length on hormones and plant response (read leaf color and plant senescence/dormancy for the winter). For example, maples start changing color when the days and nights have the same length (September 21), while oaks generally do it around the first frost.

But enough science speak. It just made me wonder how organisms or plants would or are adapting on other planets in other solar systems where there is a different gravity, season length, day or night length, year length, light intensity, wavelength of the light being emitted by their sun or suns, composition of their atmosphere, and soil types. I expect that those organisms have evolved there over a long time and should be adapted. They should probably thrive. In our case, because of human manipulation of our environment, the changes might be going too fast for some of the organisms to adapt, which may lead to mass extinction. Punctuated evolution anyone? Who knows?

Read up on that, I might write about that one of these days a bit more. Right now, I am just enjoying autumn; however, you know me, my mind cannot help wandering and wondering a bit. It is autumn, time for death and rebirth!

Nothing better than an early morning autumn walk in the woods with the dogs.  As most of you know, this is my passion, experiencing the sights, sounds and smell of the woods behind our home.

This picture was taken mid-afternoon, during a lunch walk.  I just enjoyed how the two trunks (the young and the old) mirrored each other.  As a bonsai guy, this is what we are after when we try to create movement in our trunks, or trees in general.  As I mentioned I am always, studying and wondering.  I also let my mind wander. 

The cheapo multi-disciplinarian naturalist (3/18/2019)

I often explain in my workshops that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are actually very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think I am crazy, but that will be one of the arguments I will try to make in today’s post. Today’s post is also about the beauty of being multidisciplinary. I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. For example, in my sermon last year, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology, I argued also has parsimony, she really has so much more to offer or to teach us than just biology.

Nature offers us:

• Food
• Shelter
• Fiber
• Peace of mind (or sanity)
• Health
• Art
• Wonder
• Spirituality
• And many more benefits

We are part of nature. We come from it and have evolved from it, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Some may think we have outgrown it, but we all still have that animalistic (or natural) instinct in us, from birth, until we we die. We are created true the animalistic (instinctive or some call it loving) behavior of our parents and when we die, we again become part of nature; we even refer to it in our ceremonies: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

But there is so much more. The natural world has offered us some magnificent art; it started in the old cave paintings, and then just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. Nature offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return, their admiration, love and desire to preserve and protect it.

About once a month or so I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, or even longer, a half year?

This photograph captures the beauty of nature.  We went for a walk in the woods behind our home and after some bushwhacking we found this little creek meandering through the woods.  Who could not just live here for 3 months (were it not for the bugs, but I think I would even be able to survive them with the proper protection).

Back to what I want to write about today! In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible you have less reserves as your neighbor, something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it as efficient as possible you are literally toast or at least the stuff they put on toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

The German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer, developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, each of which have million of cells, some of which have hundreds of processes going on inside those minute cells, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary to think that if one of those processes does not work that cell could potentially become a cancer cell. But then I learned we have little organs in the cell that can repair these mishaps and that we even have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if it really goes wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could eventually develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the whole picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using old experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become an multidisciplinarian, we need more of them.

The Swiss-Army person (2/6/2019)

I often explain in my classes that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think that I am crazy, but I'll try to make an argument for it today. 

I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. In my sermon, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology really has so much more to offer or to teach us.

Nature offers something to the artists; just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. It offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return. Without the interaction there would be no preservation of the natural world. 

About once a month do I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, a half year.

But back to what I want to write about today. In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it all as efficient as possible you are literally toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

Then there was the German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873). Von Liebig also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. 

I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary. But then I learned we have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if there is anything wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

Your's truly sitting behind his desk at home, trying to do some work.  It's a little cramped and I desperately need to clean it up ... maybe this weekend. (photo courtesy of my wife)

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the big picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using past experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become a multidisciplinary persons, we need more of them.  It does not have to be biology, that is just me, just do not stop learning and experiencing.

Species diversity (4/13/2018)

I am reading an interesting book, in it the author discusses how by the end of the 1700 people started doubting the creation story in the bible.  By that time, explorers and naturalists had fanned out all over the world and the sheer number of different species blew them away.  For example, the Duchess of Portland, Margaret Bentinc was a species collector and purchased samples from naturalists who returned from their exploratory travels. At her death she had thousands of species.  It seems that the auction of her collection in 1785 lasted 38 days.

It was therefore no surprise that around the 1800, people were starting to wonder how all these species could have fit on Noah's arc, let alone travel from all over the world to get there on time.  You get the message.  In a way, this together with what they found in the fossil record made them ready for a person like Charles Darwin.

No, I don't want to argue evolution in this post, but just the diversity of species in the woods behind my home. Although, I could talk about evolution to some extent since one of the plants back there is running cedar or ground pine (Diphasiastrum digitatum).  This plant is actually considered one of the older species alive in our area.  It was most likely here when the dinosaurs were roaming around.  How do we know?  Well, it is in our fossil record.   In addition, it has a very primitive way of sexually reproducing.  It actually produces spores (that used to be collected for use as flash powder) that, once they fell on the soil, grew subterranean and developed male and female parts.  The male parts would release a sperm cell with a tail and swim to the female part to fertilize it.  The sperm cell could only do that when it and the female part were submerged in water or had a water drop on it.  Only after fertilization did you get a plant that emerged out of the ground.  

That is pretty primitive isn't it?  Later on in evolutionary time, plants found a much more efficient way of doing this which was to produce pollen and make us all sneeze.  Only us animals never figured a better way to do it.  Or, maybe we did ... the male animals developed an organ (a.k.a. penis) to deposit the sperm cell pretty darn close to the egg cell or at least in an environment where it is nice, warm and wet and thus easy swimming for those little guys; no rain drops needed.

Running cedar is not the only evolutionary old plant in the woods behind our home.  Ferns are also among the oldest species, and actually they breed the same way as running cedar, through spores.  A minor exception is that their spores turn into moss and a lot of the moss we see is actually ferns that are waiting for the correct moment to get fertilized and become real ferns.  They all have the male and female parts and if a water drop (or more) would straddle a male and female sexual organ a sperm cell would also swim over and kaboom, we would get a new baby fern plant growing right in the middle of the moss.  This has happened in my bonsai pots, to my frustration, where I thought I had a nice moss carpet.  I also saw it on a bonsai channel I was watching on YouTube.  

Botanists have therefore lumped the ferns and the running cedars into one group called the Pteridophytes or plants that reproduce via spores.  Walking behind our home I often see Christmas fern, royal fern, cinnamon fern, New York Fern, lady fern and sensitive fern (6 different species). 

I think this is enough species diversity for one post, the Pteridophytes in the woods behind our home.  But just a quick update on a previous post.  The pines are in full bloom (if you are allowed to call it that).  There is pine pollen everywhere.  This means it is about on time or maybe a few days earlier than other years, even though we had a cold March.  Something to think about.  Not sure what other group of plants I'll write about next, (maybe the conifers) stay tuned!

It is pine pollen season alright (photo taken on 4/13/2018).  On my Instagram account I called it ring around the collar.  

  

Winter in the woods (2/6/2018)

It has been a cold January this year. In the newspaper this week people are complaining about their electricity bills; their heat pumps worked overtime. Our utility bills were not that bad, since we partially heat with wood and have gas heat.

The cold weather provides great opportunities to go walking out back in the woods or as we call it “the outbacks.” We had good snow (especially for our area) and we are still talking about investing in some cross country skis, but we already have so many hobbies.

Jake is ready to go for another walk in the snowy woods behind our home.  I took this picture sometime in mid-January after another snowy day.

From the looks of it, I am sure that almost all but the weakest trees in the woods behind our home will have had no problem surviving the cold spell. They are well prepared for events like this. For one, it is not that this has never happened before, temperatures around 4 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Many of the trees are well over 50 years old, so they have seen this before. Moreover, it has been cold over evolutionary time, and the parents or grandparents of these trees went through cold spells like this, survived it and were able to reproduce. In other word, “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” It is what Darwin called “survival of the fittest.” The plants that survived historic cold spells survived, and produced offspring and they just went through this year’s wimpy cold spell.

Another good thing was that the cold snap happened in January, just when you would expect something like this to happen. The plants were in full dormancy. It might be a different story when this happens in November, March or April. Plants prepare themself for this by dropping their leaves and raising the sugar content in the cells. By doing so, the sugar acts like an antifreeze. Water in the space outside the cells does not have any sugar and freezes. When this water freezes it draws water out of the cells lowering the freezing point of the cell content even further. A pretty nifty system. But even if the content of the cells freeze, in preparation for winter, many plants move their DNA to the center of the cell and wrap it in fat, very much like things we wrap in bubble wrap, further insulating and protecting the most important parts from freezing and sharp ice crystals.

Even the small pine saplings seem to tolerate the cold and the weight of the freshly fallen snow.

Plants that keep their leaves, like the pines, cedars and the hollys, fill their leaves with chemicals like anthocyanins and vitamin C. Anthocyanins are also known as flavonoids which act like antioxidants. They turn the leaves dark, sometimes purplelish and as we’ll see that allows plants to do some photosynthesis when it is cold. Other plants that stay green in the winter increase their vitamin C content. Vitamin C also functions as an antioxidant. Antioxidants are important in winter since the chlorophyll in leaves will keep on capturing sunlight to make sugar, but the cold temperatures has slowed the sugar making process down to a crawl. The cells are loaded with electrons (oxidants) and plants need the antioxidants anthocyanins and vitamin C to neutralize them off. If they don’t do that, plants would be in trouble (if we humans get too many oxidants we get inflammation or worse, cancer).  Anthocyanins are important for us as well, they make blueberries purple, and they are also found in grapes, strawberries, red cabbage and other colorful vegetables.  In the plant world, anthocyanins have another function as well, it makes leaves look either unpalatable (purple) to insects or to others insects the leaves look like they are dead (not green). A good way to protect yourself from bugs.

But it has finally warmed up a bit, although it is all relative (night times around freezing and day times in the 40s and 50s). It was a great weekend to go out and explore. We just walked along the trail and decided to get off the trail at one point and bushwack over to the other side. Hoping to find something new and exciting. Somehow we are never disappointed when we do that. It was interesting to start out in an area covered with leaves of beech and swamp chestnut oak trees, going over to an area that was dominated by a mixture of loblolly pine, overcup oak, white oak and some red oak. This last area had a lot of ephemeral ponds in them as well. I never really studied the difference, or why these two areas are so different; I have to put it on my to do list.

Some interesting pictures from trees.  Not sure what happened here.  Maybe a branch that fell off and scarred over, maybe a gall, whatever, it looked like a nose to us with an eye above it.  Never a boring day in the woods. 

I have not the slightest idea what happened here but it is absolutely bizarre.  It looks like there were two branched growing on top of each other which is somewhat unnatural.  the top one was really heavy and seemed to have bent down.  Crazy.    

No, Jake is not marking the tree, just turning and coming to me.  He was fascinated by the smells around this tree.  I want to bet this hole is the home for a critter and that is what he was reacting to.

Finally, this weekend I attended a writing class at my church and we had to write haikus. I had never written one in my life, but felt inspired by my walk in the woods that morning. Moreover, my regular readers know my interest in forest bathing. No it is not a masterwork, but anyway I had fun doing it. So here I go:

I walk in the woods

A spy in the house of deer

Nature bathe over me

-

I breath forest air

Therefore I am a human

Walking in the woods

Forest canopy (1/10/2018)

As I mentioned before, I  am a reader of naturalist books an if you scan my reading list you know that one of the books I am currently reading is David Haskell's book: The Forrest Unseen, a year's watch in nature.

Haskell tells about visits to a permanent forest plot that he makes throughout the year.  He calls it his mandala. He writes small chapters about small subjects based on observations he sees on those days, and then goes into the rabbit hole of biology.  They are mostly good, only once or twice did I scratch my head and that was because it was in my expertise, so I knew more about it; but in general, he is good!

I really liked his chapter he called "November 21 - Twigs."  In it he starts out describing watching a squirrel high up in a tree trying to eating seeds and seeing a freshly broken twig in his mandala.  He goes on talking about how trees grow twigs at random, but shed most of them and only the strongest and most useful survive (survival of the fittest).  The shedding can happen any time, but especially when it is windy or when it is storming.  It made me think when I walk the woods.  My dog Jake (a male obviously) needs to stop at every fallen twig, especially when it has leaves on it and pee on them.  So yes, I am very aware of all those twigs and so is Jake, and almost every day, there is a new twig on the ground somewhere on my trail.  The struggle for existence is going on all the time.

Haskell takes it further to really big twigs, or trees going down in the woods.  He describes how the understory plants actually see with a chemical called phytochrome (this was all fun reading for me because this was all a big part of my Ph.D. work some 28 to 30 years ago).  This is particularly important when a gap opens up after a tree falls.  It is then, that all the seedlings of trees that have been waiting, get the message: "GROW!"  Grow like hell that is, it is again survival of the fittest, who can fill that gap first, wins.  Naturally, the mature trees on the border of the gap also want to fill in, so it is a race.  I described this a little in previous posts when I wrote about the dog hairs (ok, that post is overtly political as well) and when I wrote about some of my walks in the woods recently (here and here).

I am bringing this photograph back from a previous blog, but obviously this oak found the gap left by a tree that had fallen in the past.  Oaks typically do not like to grow in the understory and it seems that it waited for its time to spread it's wings (branches) really quickly.

I sometimes leave to beaten trail and "bush whack" in the woods behind my home.  During this parrticular walk I found this tree.  I never saw this beech before; evidence that walks in the woods are never boring.   It was a big tree that obviously did one of a few things, it either survived logging, it survived a fire, or it found a hole in the canopy.  Beech trees are shade tolerant and can survive in the understory for a long time and when a gap opens they can pounce! 

Like Haskell, I too spend my time in nature observing things, learning from it and just meditating over it.  Unlike Haskell who had his mandala, I wander and do my bathing that way.  In my eye, neither way is better; they are both great ways of improving yourself and gaining or maintaining sanity.

On trainers and teaching, Part II (6/11/2015)

As a teacher/instructor I am getting this feeling that I am becoming overly-critical of how others prepare their lectures, prepare their materials, or do their teaching jobs.  This sounds horribly arrogant; I caught myself being critical yesterday when I reported on the various classes and seminars I attended in the past few days.  I am aware that I am becoming a curmudgeon in my old age and it is something I want to avoid at all cost, but I often wonder why people just plainly accept lousy teachers and sit through a class or seminar.  I have a lot of very good fellow teachers in our group (and then to think we are not professional, or I should say formally trained instructors); we all have our own style (thank God), but it is more about classes and lectures given by people outside the agency I work for.  Some of these courses have nothing to do with the subjects I generally teach; they even include some of the sermons I see at the church I visit.

One of my fellow teachers in the class for inspectors that he and I taught.

That my criticism may be off base and/or lead to (the perception of) arrogance became more apparent after talking with my supervisor and after reading reviews from various classes I taught and some of the classes that other people taught while I was observing.  They really loved the latest class that I was somewhat critical about (in my head but not vocally to the instructor, in particular since the reviews were very good).  I really wonder what I missed, but it appears that students were glad to learn more details on subjects they learned in a previous classes, in particular in preparation for the exam they have to take.  So yes, while we say that we don't teach them to take an exam, in reality we probably do, or that is what our students want us to do.

Teaching is something I truly enjoy and talk about in my blog (look for the keyword/label: teaching or training).  I too tend to get very decent reviews and some not so good reviews (see the photo below; yes, there are always a clown or two in your class).  I take serous reviews seriously and try to learn from them, but these were somewhat rediculous.

The joker

The angry person

I am still not aware that I have an opinionated liberal agenda, other than on that specific day, I talked about evolution and the need to preserve trees.  However, I suspect this was the guy I asked to stop having very loud side conversations with some of his fellow students while I was teaching and others were trying to listen to me instead of to him.  So yes I do take reviews personal and try to learn from them.  Another one of my favorite positive reviews went something like this: "My supervisor forced me to come to this class.  I did not expect much, but I actually learned something."  I really do think there is a joker in every class I teach.

An online search on teaching strategies and instructional design brought my attention to a few things. Deborah Davis gives the following recommendations in here book: The Adult Learner’s Companion: A Guide for the Adult College Student:

• Use the adult learner’s experience and knowledge as a basis from which to teach.

• Show adult learners how this class will help them attain their goals.

• Make all course and text material practical and relevant to the adult learner. 

• Show adult learners the respect they deserve.

• Adjust your teaching speed to meet the needs of the older learner.

• Motivate adult learners to learn new information.

In his "Rapid Elearning Blog" Tom Kuhlmann gives five little nuggets:

• Instructional design is more than just putting information in front of learners

• Instructional design has clear goals and gets learners focused on the right things

• Instructional design provides context and perspective

• Instructional design compresses the learning process and saves time (this is probably the one I violate the most)

• Instructional design engages learners with clear and meaningful content

I really like to do all these things in my class design and teaching; maybe subconsciously, but I try.  As I tell some of my students, "I have sat through classes that were so boring that I promised myself that if I ever had to give a talk or a class, I would never be like that."

I have two questions for the readers of my blog:

1. Do you also notice that you've become overly critical (in a positive way) either with age or since you have become more seasoned in your job?
2. If you are an adult educator or attend a lot of training classes, do your agree with the two bulleted lists above or are there any other bullets you would like to add?  

Thanks.

Jan

Seaford (8/17/2014)

It was a very quiet Sunday morning when I went to the boat to prepare it to receive a coat of nonskid paint in the cockpit.  I took this picture at 10 in the morning.  I was the only one there, and there were even very few people at the public boat launch in the far back of the photograph.

Typing the word cockpit makes me all the sudden realize that airplanes also have cockpits.  Interestingly the dictionary says its origin is from an enclosed area where they had cock fights.  It goes on and says it is also the name of the quarters of warships where the junior officers are housed.  A very interesting juxtaposition here.  On small water crafts like sailboats and smaller motorboats the word “pit” in the word cockpit sounds more true to its meaning; it is a well where you stand in and do most of the boating and having a nonskid floor is important. 

Oh well.  An egret was standing on the dock, peering down, probably looking for a juicy morsel like a small crab or small fish.  At low tide (which it was) the mud flats are often overtaken by fiddler crabs.  Neat little animals; the males have one huge claw and one that is the normal size.  Females have equal size claws.  Makes you wonder if size matters in this part of the animal kingdom as well.  There are so many ways of being attractive to the opposite sex in the animal kingdom; it is amazing.  Even in our own species, the humans, different cultures have different (physical) things they look at to judge whether that person makes a good mate.  It is absolutely fascinating what evolution did to further a species and facilitates selecting mates that would make my offspring more successful than yours.  That’s what Darwin called “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest.”  Guess that is also why we called out boat the "Beagle."

Anyway, there had been heavy dew fall, and after drying the boat and waiting some time, I had a successful day getting the nonskid paint down.  It is now safer down there; it looks better and hopefully less sensitive to water getting into the core of the boat.

Yorktown (3/3/2014)

Although it never gets old to me, I hope it does not get old for whom ever is looking at these pictures (but I have yet to get any comments on my pictures, so maybe no one is looking), I have been showing this pond before.  Well maybe the winter is getting old, it has been an amazing winter.

Coming home from 10 days on the road we got a forced day off, because it snowed throughout Virginia that Monday morning.  Taking advantage of it we went for a walk out back.  It was snowing and dark and somewhat spooky.  Then to think, that the day before you could hear the salamanders in the pond.  Since these are ephemeral ponds and dry during the summer, it is to the salamander's evolutionary advantage to try to breed during this season, but yes it seems counter intuitive.  This pond is 5 to 6 feet deep in the middle and it dries up completely during the summer.  If it had a permanent pool, you can expect fish to live in it and these fish would eat the baby salamanders, making breeding impossible in ponds with a fish population.  In 2003 we saw the pond go from completely dry to overflowing overnight during hurricane Isabel.  Most species would breed when it is a little warmer.  I think bald eagles are also about to breed, and it is interesting how some of these species can do this in the cold; but then it is to their evolutionary advantage.  Nature is neat, and as I say, nature (and evolution) is very parsimonious, and evolution has figured it out.