WRITING
Current writing samples focus on a variety of science and nature themes. Please contact me should you be interested in using my work for publication or would like help on a project. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Thank you.
The Magic Power of a Pair of Binoculars
A Season of Surprises at Eagle Marsh
September Theme: Cycles of Life
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Also author of...
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An Introduction to Zoology for Zookeepers
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"The Measles Epidemic of Northwestern Kentucky in 1917"
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An American Journey: One Family's Story Through the Major Events of American History
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AAPA Macroscopic Examination Guidelines - Renal and
Ureteral Cancer Cases
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Article Submission, Narrative Non-fiction
June 2023
The Magic Power of a Pair of Binoculars
In my favorite cult-classic Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom, angsty pre-teen, Suzy Bishop, declares that her binoculars are her “pretend magic power.” She says, “It helps me to see things closer. Even if they’re not very far away.” We soon learn that through her perspective against a backdrop of fictional New Penzance Island and Anderson’s symmetrical artistic style, her binoculars show her the world for what it really is. She sees truths hiding in plain sight while she searches for connection and belonging. What hidden world would my binoculars reveal to me at the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival this year? I am enthusiastic to find out.
Led by National Park Ranger Penny in her crisp khakis and flat-brimmed Stetson hat, we begin our walk in the wild. List of things to bring: notebook and pen, Sibley’s Guide to Birds, and binoculars. As we walk, a yellow warbler comes into view against the verdant wall of oaks and staghorn sumac on the path near the visitor’s center. I twist the focus on my binoculars to the right. Too far. I twist to the left. There it is —suspended for a moment in my eyepieces in flawless depth of field. Unable to be seen in such defined detail with the naked eye, the image passes through the objective lens, flips, and reverses through a prism, and meets my eyes with a focused stream of light and precise clarity. The bird in question is a golden orb with a thin, straight bill. Its throat is streaked in cinnamon and its wings are striped with olive-gray markings. It offers a few bright notes and zips away. Park Ranger Penny excitedly asks us “Did you see it?” I did. I am astonished because I have never seen such birds before I started paying attention to migrations. But of course, they’ve always been here.
Next, we pass through the state park gates to bird on our own. We climb the observation tower and stand in still formation at the top, binoculars pointed to the sandy beach and white shorebirds looping like stringless kites above the Lake Michigan surf. We observe two kinds of birds —Caspian Terns and Ring-billed Gulls. One of the gulls swoops down to retrieve something in its beak and is caught by a riptide of air that pulls it higher into the atmosphere. Through my binoculars, I see it drop what it is holding and free-fall back to the water to scoop it up again, only to amuse itself with this game of drop and catch over and over again. I cannot recall ever seeing this documented playful behavior before during an ordinary day at the beach.
Finally, we head to the Great Marsh Trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park, a lush habitat and important breeding ground for migrating birds of the Mississippi Flyway. We step up on the wooden platform deck overlooking the interdunal wetland with its fens and prairie sedge grasses. We meet other eager birders with their binoculars and long camera lenses pointed at something I hear one wonderstruck birder describe as “making the trip worth it.” I quickly swivel my own binoculars in the same direction to capture a remarkable glimpse of an American Bittern, amongst the sounds of camera clicks and soft trills of Sandhill Cranes passing overhead.
We take a moment to revel in the moments we have experienced. At each stop on the festival trail, we are surprised by our discoveries, observing birds and behavior that we have never seen before but that has been here all along, waiting for us just to pay attention. Like Suzy Bishop’s view, we encounter secret truths standing before us in plain sight, the obvious one for us being that the world is more complex than we seem to realize until we notice the details. But that is the point of birding- the noticing, the being present in the moment, and the slowing down of the hurry of life to see and understand the world for what it is. There are things we think we know, but we don’t. We have blind spots, we understand, but when we open ourselves to the beauty of birds and the magic power of a pair of binoculars, we bring greater focus to life.
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Article Submission, Narrative Nonfiction
May 2023
The Fledgling
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Wild and roaring winds came in like a lion and left like the tide. A debris field of tree limbs and porch cushions displayed themselves like seashells on the lawn on that crisp minty morning. That’s when I saw it there at the end of the driveway. A cup of brown twigs and white feathers had been brutally discarded onto the wet pavement, misshapen like a vessel gone wonky on the pottery wheel. Oh, the sorrow of a Robin! I peeled the soggy sides open, but what I found surprised me. The nest was empty — an empty nest. It was a different kind of sorrow, I knew all too well.
Off into the world all at once, we unloaded Evan’s bags from the car. We helped him unpack his things, filled his mini fridge, and hastily tacked up a Bob Dylan poster above his bed on move-in day. “Take care of all your memories, for you cannot relive them,” Dylan mumbled in a minor key in that old familiar song. I thought about what that meant for a moment. Time is as unrelenting as waves pummeling the shore in neverending succession. I was reminded in that moment to hold onto those precious moments, but a boy must grow up. There’s no going back. A murky mixture of grief and joy carried me away as we embraced him for the last time before watching him disappear into his college dormitory. “This bird has flown,“ I thought. I knew he would come home from time to time, of course, but it would surely be different. Most birds, however, never return to the nest once they have fledged, I recalled with a sigh.
The life of a bird starts out simply enough, under the watchful eye of its mother. With most bird species, the mother carefully builds a nest and lays her delicate eggs in its pocket each spring. The eggs are kept warm underneath her fluffy feathers until hatched, and afterward she begins the tireless work of keeping the tiny creatures fed and happy until they are strong and capable of flying and feeding themselves. How long a bird stays in the nest depends on the species and the safety that its nest provides, but it can range from barely a day for precocial birds such as the chicken-like megapodes to two to three weeks for altricial songbirds. Larger birds, like eagles and hawks, on the other hand, can have a much longer fledging time of up to 100 days.
Once the birds are ready to leave the nest, some immediately fly away while others still need a little tending. This is the most dangerous time to be a bird. But it can be just as dangerous to remain in the nest, where predators can easily find birds and make haste of their found lunch. This balance between wing strength and predation pressure is what sends young birds into the world, just before they’re quite ready. They will be ready soon enough. Parents often stand by, willing to jump in. Small birds without much flying skill hop around in the bushes and parents lead them to food. We’re told that if we find a baby bird to leave it be. The parents are usually nearby.
When birds are fully fledged, most never return to the care of their parents. This is true, with the exception of the Canada Goose and a few others whose offspring may return for the winter or migrate with their families. In the next year, most mother birds return to the business of building a new nest, gathering twigs, soft feathers, and bits of things to cement together. Robins may build upon their old nest, but not usually. Parasites from previous nests can harm a new brood and as a result, it is more beneficial to start anew. Young ones grow up. It’s all right to send them off and say goodbye.
Once the torrent of exams finally receded in the spring, Evan returned home to spend his summer break with us. We have driven up to the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival to look for shorebirds and warblers and also to reconnect. White birds squabble and shriek above us, as the sun scatters light across the gentle surf of Lake Michigan and onto the sandy ridges dotted with blooms of Red Columbine and Birdfoot Violet. Evan has grown in size and confidence, it seems, as I gaze at him. We occasionally pause on the trail to peer through our binoculars, while he regales us with stories of the semester’s difficult classes and humorous college shenanigans that resulted in bicycles hanging in trees. “An American Redstart!” I interrupt. “You’re right,” he confirms. He smiles and I start to relax, my anxiety ebbing to expose sheer jubilation that he is happy and thriving. “Go on, tell us more!” I implore. He continues, but soon my thoughts turn to how remarkable it is that he survived his first year — his fledgling year.
I recall the lonesome and empty nest at the end of the driveway that I found that previous spring. I think about it now from a new perspective. The sadness that it once represented to me has turned to relief and even elation. The birds that were nurtured by their mother in the snug confines of that cup were fledged. That is a celebration. If that mother bird were a person, she would be proud and elated. She had successfully raised her children. And while time gradually reveals to us an emotionally complicated contrast of endings and new beginnings and memories for which we both cherish and mourn, I imagine Mother Robin taking comfort in a job well done. And I will try to do the same.
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Personal Essay, Narrative Nonfiction
December 2022
Aerie Anthem
When I’m not occupied with being a naturalist and identifying birds and frogs by their musical songs out at Eagle Marsh Nature Preserve in my mucky rubber boots, I am playing my clarinet in the community band in town on Thursday nights. Last summer I became obsessed with perfecting my rendition of Josef Wagner’s tricky march Under the Double Eagle, later popularized in the early 1900s by the “March King,” John Philip Sousa. Under the Double Eagle is one of the many lively patriotic marches our convocation of musicians perform, so universally familiar as to practically be imprinted onto our American DNA, though the origin of the song is actually Austrian. It rouses in its listener a soaring sense of national pride and common purpose and reminds us, under a blanket of July heat and a banner of waving stars and stripes, that there is nothing we can’t achieve if we set our collective hearts and minds to it. I set my mind to the monumental task of endlessly practicing the song to get it down pat. If an Eagle is emblematic of a sense of power and determination, then the mastery of this song indeed required ‘double’ of those qualities, as the title warned me. I knew that even a moment of hesitation while moving along with the notes could send me plummeting over a musical cliff. “Light fingers” I reminded myself. It was Under the Double Eagle that popped into in my mind the moment I saw my first beautiful Bald Eagle in the wild, months later.
If conjuring the regal Bald Eagle through song is a sublime experience, then seeing one in person is transformative. Though we might think of a Bald Eagle on July 4th, the best time of year to view one is actually in winter when the leaves have deserted the trees. This was when I happened upon one quite accidentally. I peeked out into the cloudless cerulean sky that brisk and brown leaf-littered day when something caught my eye, an impression of something sizable taking flight above me. I thrust my face forward over the steering wheel of my car and looked up, one eye still on the road. To my surprise, a singular Bald Eagle danced in atmospheric harmony with the breezes above. I recognized his large powerful body of dark umber. His tail and head were covered in white plumage — not bald at all — and he had an aggressive yellow hooked beak reminiscent of the color of dish gloves. He was suspended in the sky with wings open to about 7 ft, and rising on a glissando of thermal air when he gave a sudden percussive snap of his wings. He propelled himself over a tree line and disappeared from view. “Woah” I uttered under my breath. This elegant creature, rescued from the endangered list and marking one of the greatest crescendos of success in species survival, was in my presence, unbelievably. I was blown away by the thought of it — that I could witness so casually and quietly the result of a decades-long conservation effort in resurrecting these birds. He was a specimen truly representative of strength and resolve, much like the manner in which Sousa’s Double Eagle is meant to be played. Con brio- with strength!
I had never seen a Bald Eagle before. Their numbers were measly most of my life, with only 582 known breeding pairs reportedly in existence in the US in the 1990s when I graduated from high school. Even fewer than that existed in the years before, due to pesticides like DDT and habitat loss. My only knowledge of Bald Eagles came from grade school social studies books where they were depicted in official capacities, quite on-the-job, with arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other — an American emblem since 1782. It is an extraordinary achievement that as a nation we could turn our full attention to protecting this bird, which is so symbolic of our national identity and also similarly important to Native American culture. In 2022 in my 50s, there are now an astounding 71,400 nesting pairs of Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Services. And the 350 pairs in Indiana, concentrated mostly in the southern half of the state, are believed to be descended from the original 73 birds that were reintroduced near Lake Monroe beginning in 1985. Scientists studying eagles are ever-vigilant, however, and they continue be protected as a species by government decree. We should not want to come across the double-dotted repeat at the end of a stanza that sends us back to the beginning of the song for eagles.
To understand how impressive these birds are, one need only look at their natural history. Bald Eagles are majestic maestros of the sky, the apex animal of the airy food chain. Of the 68 species of eagles in the world, there are just two in the US: the Golden Eagle and the Bald Eagle. The Bald Eagle’s range is spread across the continental US and Canada, flocking in abundant numbers near large bodies of water, where it feeds on fish and other small prey stolen from other birds. Their nesting aeries sit at dizzying heights off the ground atop sturdy trees or on the sides of craggy cliffs, which they return to every year to raise their fledglings. The aeries can become massive in size, as the birds continue to build onto them year after year — a masterful architectural achievement. At Eagle Marsh Nature Preserve, eager children huddle up tightly into a reproduction of an Eagle’s nest when they visit, to experience what it is like to be a baby eaglet. “Do you think the eagles will be mad we are in their nest?” one child questioned sweetly, which caused me to smile. Even a child understands the respect we must pay to nature.
When thinking about the tough and strong-willed capabilities of the Bald Eagle, their almost musical mating habits give new meaning to the words “Double Eagle.” The male and female birds lock talons together and spin down en accelerando to the ground in a cartwheel fashion, letting go just before striking the ground. Sousa might have envisioned this display as he directed the Marine Band in Under the Double Eagle with a grabbing declaratory fanfare before settling into its zig-zagging woodwind tune and hefty brass line, ultimately finishing with a startling stinger reminiscent of the birds’ last-second reversal. Walt Whitman described this mating ritual in his poem, The Dalliance of the Eagles: “…In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Till o-er the river poised, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull, A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, She hers, he his, pursuing.”
In turning my attention back to human matters this winter, I can’t help but think about the power of iconic national symbols and their ability to reflect our fundamental desire for belonging, inclusion, and shared experience through common ideals. National symbols are a focus for diverse societies to come together as one, and can be agents for positive change. If symbols like the Bald Eagle call on our predisposition to virtue — and for our collective action — then surely we are just as capable of nurturing all that we share on this planet. If we are to avert the worst of our climate problems, then perhaps we should anoint more national symbols like Indiana’s endangered Marsh Wren with its buzzy trilling song, or Blanchard’s Cricket Frog as marble-clicking Maracas of the wild. All living things are members of this marvelous orchestra of life, weaving our rhythms and melodies into the greater composition. But it will take all of us to do the work to protect them. “No one person can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” Yale professor Halford Luccock points out. We can find our path forward with the marvelous Bald Eagle as our example.
In returning to that July night, I traded my rubber boots for Patent leather slip-ons. I nervously stepped out onto the outdoor amphitheater stage, clarinet in hand. The bright lights were blinding. All eyes were upon us. I side-glanced out into the audience and then looked back up at our conductor, baton up, and dressed as John Philip Sousa in character. He gave all of us a warm smile. He mouthed the words “Relax, light fingers.” I took a deep breath, and tightened my embouchure. When the baton came down we flew as eagles.
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A Season of Surprises at Eagle Marsh
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Cars with families rumbled down the gravel road, obscured by white dust and a dense fog. “Fog comes on little cat feet,” poet Carl Sandburg writes, but would it “sit on its haunches” or “move on?” the trail guides wondered. It was clear that the moody morning complication was nothing but expected in this wild and unpredictable setting of Eagle Marsh Nature Preserve. It added an unplanned personality to the day that made it interesting, if anything. Organized adults pushing strollers or holding onto little hands, strode up with their own curious kittens for the day’s nature hike. One child pulled on shiny green boots and scuffled about through the fallen leaves, stirring up the loamy-scented air. Others had their coats zipped up for them for good measure. Led by their four guides, about twenty young rosy-cheeked students were herded up for a little adventure.
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Eagle Marsh offers learning opportunities for kids of all ages. They come to the marsh and get to witness nature in its seasonal cycles. Kids first learn about the history and importance of the marsh from their trail guides. They are told that the marsh was sculpted by glaciers thousands of years ago and later used primarily by local Native Miami tribes and settlers. It was cleared for farmland use at one time, but was then restored to a wetland once again. A wetland creates a place for water to go and helps it to be cleaned and made healthy, the kids learn. The marsh’s returned reeds and rushes, vernal ponds, and surrounding wooded areas now attract an abundance of animal species that they may get to see when they visit. Some species are even state-endangered, including the mysterious Black-Crowned Night Heron that feeds by the moonlight and the yellow-throated Blanding’s Turtle that hides in dense vegetation near shallow waters. With luck, one might even spot a Bald Eagle, as the preserve’s namesake suggests. It is never known when these beautiful creatures will make an appearance, or if another equally interesting animal will cross the path. “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks,” famed naturalist, John Muir, foretells. What would they find this morning?
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They started on the hike, turning toward the trail along the pond. Just then, news spread quickly across the group to be still and quiet. A White-tailed deer family of three was spotted, ears twitchy and perked. The deer stepped carefully and silently into the tall grasses with a constant awareness of the children’s presence. Kids whispered “Where are they going?” They giggled and pointed, turning to their guides for affirmation of this lucky encounter. Their minds spun with whirligig thoughts about the deer, which elicited so many questions. Guides smiled and showed eagerness to share their passion for nature with them, knowing that these special kind of moments lead to more questions and learning. Guides spent the next few minutes talking to them about deer and camouflage, as the family blended into the brown and dry field before completely disappearing. Occasional flashes of white from their tails caught their eyes, appearing like fluffy cotton cattails bobbing above the vegetation line.
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The kids continued to explore. They were motivated to find more living things that interested them. Working together, the kids turned over decaying logs to search for life or looked for seeds amongst the dried plants, all while learning about the processes of the season. “Quick! Get the Jar,” they gleefully shouted as they carefully trapped little red boxelder insects inside. Eventually, they returned back to the barn where these and other tiny things became entire baffling worlds when observed under the microscope. For their final task, they split open Wild Senna pods and collected the smooth black seeds, which they accomplished all by themselves. While waiting for everyone to gather up again, they chattered like wild birds to each other about the day’s remarkable finds.
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As their time at the marsh came to an end, and the children trodded off in their muddy boots, it quickly became apparent why Eagle Marsh is such a special place to be. It is the unexpected and the not knowing what one will see next that makes it so exciting - the element of surprise, the discovery. It is the constant change from day to day and season to season that allows for discovery at every turn of the trail and at each new visit. It is a bashful buck in one moment and a daring Leopard Frog the next. It is a towering yellow compass flower on the prairie and a flitting Monarch butterfly by the pond. Discovery makes learning an active process where knowledge can be built upon right away and made memorable. When cultivated correctly, kids show budding independence while also learning to cooperate with others, it is hoped. They direct their own learning by the questions they ask, all while building their own confidence and creativity. Best of all, they have fun creating memories on the marsh trails, where they get to laugh and move their bodies.
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Indeed, the day was comprised of all these elements at Eagle Marsh. Trail guiding goals accomplished. The kids “took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees,” as poet Henry David Thoreau predicted. The seeds planted in each child from the day’s adventure will surely continue to grow. And it will be a wonderful surprise to see what blooms.
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Personal Essay, Narrative Non-fiction
November 2022
Little River Wetlands Newsletter, Issue: Dec. 2022
Creative Letter, Narrative Nonfiction
September 2022
September Theme: Cycles of Life
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Hello my fun guys and gals! At last, the month of September is here to mark the beginning of autumn. I hope that the changing season is welcome where you are and that you are well. It is also the month of the mushroom. I hope you celebrate with a yummy shroom pizza, stuffed mushroom caps, or some other magical mushroom dish that brings out that wild and earthy side of you. I know I will find lots of delicious ones at the market. Do you like mushrooms too?
During this time of year, what was glorious and gold, “nature’s hardest hue to hold,” according to Poet Robert Frost, begins its slow descent into slumber. Greens turn to yellow and crimson, then to brown. Finally, life slips beneath the earth to decompose into earthly elements and offer nutrients to hibernating seeds that will spring to life again many months from now. Little button mushrooms break through the detritus and open like tiny umbrellas or fan out over decaying logs to remind us of the important work going on below ground to cycle nutrients for future life. I like how Author Margaret Atwood’s poem, September Mushroom, describes this mysterious process. “They nosed up through the sandy loam and damp leaf litter- a sliver of color, then another- bringing their cryptic news of what goes on down under: the slow dissolve of lignin, the filaments, the little nodes like fists, assembling their nets and mists. Some were bright red, some purple, some brown, some white, some lemon yellow.” It is the cycle of life, is it not? It is the continuous and always changing cycle of birth, life, and death. It reminds us that nothing is permanent. “Nothing gold can stay,” relates Frost.
This impermanence reminds us that we must find acceptance with this process, don’t you think? It is the nature of life. The 60’s band, The Byrds, tell us from their song lyrics that borrow from the book of Ecclesiastes “To everything there is a season. Turn! Turn! Turn! A time to build up and a time to break down…and a time to every purpose under heaven.” The fungus among us has an important purpose in this process of breaking down and without them we wouldn’t have the food that sustains us or the beautiful flowers in our gardens we love so much. Our lives depend on this wonderful interaction with mushrooms. And the song also teaches us that as we experience our own building growth in life there will also be times when we must contract and tear down. But not to worry, a new season of life will begin anew and flowers will certainly bloom again for us. Mushroom wisdom.
This wisdom makes me think of a person from history who met great challenges in her career and experienced the loss of her path in life, but with time and nurturing, blossomed again through her determination. Most people don’t know this, but Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), author of the Tales of Peter Rabbit, one of my favorites, was also a naturalist who studied fungi. Most know of her rabbit characters, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, but what not many know is that she also studied and painted mushrooms in a scientific way. Isn’t that fascinating? She illustrated fungi, collected specimen, and mounted them for microscopic observation. She conducted experiments with spores and set out theories about her work. Her illustrations are truly superb. As a true visionary, she never saw art and science as mutually exclusive.
Unfortunately, Beatrix Potter lived at a time when scientific societies were strictly limited to men and so entry into London’s Linnaean Society was denied. She had to abandon her course of study on her work with the species now known as Flammulina velutipes a cold-weathered species with a red-orange to yellow cap. Ironically, a century later, mycologists all over the world study her illustrations. Though the demise of her career in science due to the unfair circumstances brought upon her was deeply sad, her ideas about the magic of nature reemerged through her famous children’s stories. She was not the type of person to wonder “what if”, so she didn’t dwell on it. She said simply “ I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me, it is a stronger desire than ever.” Transformative thinking, don’t you think? I am glad that many years later the Linnenaean Society chose to recognize her important work in the field of mycology. She was truly amazing.
I hope that this September you are inspired by the wisdom of mushrooms and that you can find greater understanding in the cyclical nature of our world. I hope that your challenges can turn into opportunities like that of Beatrix Potter and that obsolete ideas can evolve into modern ones that pop up like mushrooms in your life. Enjoy a delicious mushroom burger or take a walk in nature to be in awe of what it can teach us.“Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the meditation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seems to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death, and seen with the eye of the poet, as god sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.” -Henry David Thoreau.
Happy autumn!
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Creative Writing Letter, Narrative Nonfiction
June 2022
June Theme: The Outer Limits
A letter for you in June…
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart
-Stardust by Hoosier songwriter, Hoagy Carmichael
Greetings! We have been apart as the song goes, and we really miss seeing you. I sit here in the Neil Armstrong building at Purdue University in West Lafayette on my son’s college visit and I am in awe as I observe the NASA Apollo I Lunar Module replica as it looms above with an expanse of gleaming windows behind it. Students brush past me to get to their classes. I am completely out of place- an adult in a young person’s world. I wonder where the future will take these kids and about the many engineers and astronauts who walked this campus and went on to make a meaningful contribution to the NASA space program, a symbol of America’s hopes and dreams. I sit here at the command center of it all. This very month, NASA plans to launch its CAPSTONE project. With the help of all of these aerospace scientists and others, we will gain knowledge about spacecraft navigation as a precursor to the Gateway Lunar Orbiting Outpost project, a new project that will help NASA to grow in new ways. It’s so exciting and I hope that you find it interesting too!
As I ponder this, I also realize that it is the month of June and across our nation students are preparing for graduation commencement, including my own son. It is a wonderful and hopeful celebration of so many talented and bright young thinkers, having completed their studies. This month may make you feel nostalgic for that day you received your diploma as well. But a commencement isn’t a completion. To “commence” is to “begin,” and so it is that students look to their futures and perhaps wonder what lies ahead. The sky is the limit. Or maybe not. Maybe, instead, our successes come from not letting ourselves be limited. We succeed by reaching for the stars and beyond the Outer Limits, as astronauts and engineers have done. I hope these kids go on to do great things in the world.
Of the 27 astronauts who have graduated from Purdue University, one stands out to me for having made a clear decision not to be limited- Dr. Janice Voss. Dr. Voss began working at the Johnson Space Center in 1973 after graduating from Purdue. She was later chosen to become a NASA astronaut in 1994, becoming a mission specialist on many flights. She worked on Spacelab/Spacehub and worked on robotics issues that I can barely comprehend. She has an impressive resume. When asked, she said that her primary inspiration for wanting to go into space came from a favorite childhood book, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. If you haven’t read it (or seen the movie) It is a story about a young girl with a Nobel Prize-winning biologist for a mother who has to traverse time to save her father. Voss said that the powerful female roles didn’t strike her as anything unusual, but instead were norms she accepted. She didn’t even consider any limits that society might place on her as a female. Oddly, I found this type of thinking to be common amongst the many astronauts I researched. None considered limits. They were only focused on their work. First woman in space, Sally Ride once said, “you can be what you can’t see,” meaning, I suppose, that anything you can imagine you can do and be. Voss took a copy of A Wrinkle in Time aboard flight STS-94 and later mailed it to author L’Engle. What a brilliant person she was!
I think we all have preconceptions of what we can and cannot do and what we are allowed and not allowed to be because of our gender, race, age, status, ability, etc. And of course, we all have real challenges with which we contend. Even still, maybe it’s time to reflect and move on. We should be proud of the things we have accomplished and have overcome and then with great pomp and circumstance commence a new chapter of life that lets go of some of the boundaries that we have placed on ourselves. We have graduated from the past. There’s more out there in the universe to see and about which to learn. Up the road from Purdue, renowned Indiana author, Kurt Vonnegut, said, “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” There is a great reward for going beyond our perceived limits to see what we can do.
Dearest ones, my hope for you in June is that you surprise yourself. If there’s something you have wanted to do and can , have the “limitless” astronaut mentality and launch into it. Don’t listen to the “mustn’ts and the shouldn’ts” as poet Shel Silverstein would say. Have a joyful summer. We are grateful to know you and are amazed by your kindness and character. You are an example of a person bound by no limit. Keep being an inspiration to us all. Signing off from the aerospace department.
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Creative Letter, Narrative Nonfiction
May 2022
May Theme: Planting Seeds
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Dear family and friends, a letter for you in the month of May…
Botany Field Notes- Smithsonian- VICKI FUNK-1984
Hello from Venezuela! Our research group arrived at camp. With straw hats on our heads and binoculars around our necks, we travelled down the river on long skiffs with thatched roofs, carrying along boxes of food supplies and equipment. Nothing but forest surrounds us. I am simultaneously nervous and excited. We have rudimentary buildings here to set up shop and we have already begun spreading out to explore the wild habitat surrounding base camp, calling out when we spot something interesting. On day 1, we fogged trees to see what insects fell onto our drop cloths- giant beetles and lots of spiders! We measured the circumferences of trees. We used a microphone and recorder to document the songs of frogs. The forest is dark and moody, capturing a mist that is palpable. A cacophony of whistling and chirping birds are so noisy it can be hard to concentrate sometimes. On day 2, we then travelled to a different elevation with a guide. Where we landed was described as an “island” because the vegetation is nothing like what is seen elsewhere. The earth was wet and loamy. Prickly and fanning succulents grew on rough and weak woody stems there that protrude from the ground. I’m so excited because I found bright yellowish-orange flowers growing that appear to be a member of the sunflower family, never described or catalogued before. This expedition is a terrific success so far.
This is how I imagined her field notes after taking note of Smithsonian archived video footage of her amazing trip to South America in the 1980’s.
From the field station to the backyard, in May we celebrate the beauty of plants and flowers as the earth reemerges from its winter slumber. We honor the many botanists and horticulturists who study plant life and bring scientific knowledge to help us understand our world, like Vicki Funk (1947-2019), a renowned botanist for the National History Museum of the Smithsonian. I hope that your garden, real or imagined, is beginning to take shape as well.
Maia, the Roman goddess of things that grow tells us that the month of May is centered on the reemergence of plant life and flowers during this bridge between spring and summer. We start to notice the return of plant life. A sprouted seed bursts from its seed shell and delicately and secretly emerges from the dirt, reaching upward to the sun. Young leaves unfurl as the plant grows stronger. A hopeful bud forms and enlarges until it bursts to reveal tightly bound velvety petals. As it grows, the form relaxes and the trusting petals gently open. A field of color spreads gleefully in unison as one steps back to gaze at the larger picture. Its seeds are then carried by the wind like wishes for future generations of flowers. This happens repeatedly in May. I am sure you will see this in your garden too.
Many of the seeds of flowers Vicki Funk collected on her expeditions are stored in seed banks, some at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, with the intention of protecting and preserving the genetic diversity of the world’s plant life. Seeds are like hopes and dreams of a future, aren’t they? Planting a seed is a hopeful act, I think. It is a promise of a future that cannot yet be known, which requires patience and trust. To plant a seed in one’s mind is a similar hopeful endeavor. A seed is the beginning of an idea that might bloom into something more significant. We must all remember that the seeds we sow, we must also reap, so we must always try to take care of that which we plant, that they be positive seeds and focused on the well-being of ourselves and others. Sometimes easier said than done, though, right? Thoughts can become weeds if we don’t tend to the garden of our minds. Rumi explains that “Every leaf will tell you: what you sow will bear fruit, so if you have any sense my friend, don’t plant anything but love.” Progress, as well, begins with planted seeds and can grow and blossom within you and others to make change possible. Life’s challenges inspire the desire for change that is helped by our way of thinking. In one of her best songs, Bette Midler sings “…for beneath the bitter snow lies the seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes the rose.”
Vicki Funk spent her career leading the way for new discoveries of plants and the understanding of biological processes. She taught new researchers what she had learned and created a novel path of study for botanists. She planted many seeds in others in her field throughout her career for which we will always be grateful. Without her we wouldn’t have Cirsium funkiae, The Funky Thistle. I am also thankful for you as someone who always sends out positive seeds into the world. You inspire all of us. Keep being the beautiful flower that you are. I hope that May is a wonderful month for you and that you are rewarded with joy, but also beautiful ruby roses and lovely daisies that gently sway in the wind, whether they be in your back yard or in your dreams.
Have a wonderful summer.
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