General Interest

Birdwatching!

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A still from the video - I’m the birdwatcher in the striped shirt!

A still from the video - I’m the birdwatcher in the striped shirt!

I love spending time outdoors, and I enjoy opportunities to do so while learning, exercising, and having new experiences. On the first day of spring this year - March 20th - I joined some friends in a birding hike at the Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center in Stone State Park. To our surprise, part of the way through a cameraman appeared to document the event for the local news!

In this ABC television affiliate KCAU 9 video clip, you’ll hear about what we were up to but also get a glimpse of me on the trail - I’m the birdwatcher in the striped shirt, black face mask, maroon hat, and grey backpack. On this hike, I learned how to focus binoculars and became a little more familiar with some of the more common birds in the region: the white-breasted nuthatch, the red-bellied woodpecker, and the downy and hairy woodpeckers (they look very similar but have different beak lengths). We also saw a couple of bald eagles and turkeys, though I had already been able to identify those!

For The Birds: A Story of Lowes' Clearance Plants

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I had a few items I needed to pick up at Lowes recently, so I stopped in. As you might suspect of a person who has over 200 plants, if I go to a place for any reason that happens to sell plants, I will also look over the plants. You might be surprised to learn that despite being a person who has over 200 plants, I still sometimes not only look over but also buy plants from Lowes and Home Depot. This is really to their garden sections’ credit; these two big box stores do not just offer the same tried-and-true suite of plants year in and year out but rather - a bit belatedly due to the scale of the endeavor - follow houseplant trends and occasionally offer exciting and somewhat hard-to-find options. (Though if a plant is for sale at Lowes or Home Depot, it isn’t going to be rare for too much longer.)

On this day they had some new-to-me begonias in stock. For the longest time, I wouldn’t grow any begonias because the first time I tried - probably over a decade ago by now - the begonia died extremely quickly and I held a grudge against the whole genus. However, this past summer in quick succession I bought a cane begonia I liked the look of on extreme clearance and obtained a free cutting of another; both did relatively well for me and then I acquired a small Rex begonia a little later. Over this winter, that Rex begonia has begun to flourish and charm me and the two cane begonias have continued to do relatively well. As this nascent collection of begonias was forming, I also began to research more about begonias and now… well, I’m giving them a real try. It’s too early to say whether they’ll be suited for me or I for them in the long term, but I’m enjoying the discovery process.

So, I walk into Lowes’ plant area - which is fully indoors due to the winter - and spot two interesting new begonia cultivars for sale: ‘Linda Dawn’ and ‘Benigo.’ I begin to investigate them closely. The price point is on the high side - $20 each - because they are relatively rare, of medium size, and come with ceramic cache pots. I hem and haw as I look them over about whether I want to pay this much, but I grow more and more inclined not to because the begonias are very clearly partially eaten. In fact, as I really examine the plants, all the young and mature leaves are damaged and missing parts. Only the very newest growth looks whole. It looks quite a bit like caterpillar damage, so I start to think that the greenhouse these were grown in prior to being shipped out had a caterpillar infestation. I don’t see any current caterpillars, though, but I assume the plants were probably fogged as they were shipped out. I decide to walk away, but I’m sad because I would enjoy trying these plants out in my collection if I didn’t feel like the price was unfair for the quality of the plant on offer.

I double back and make my way to a garden center employee I spotted earlier. I ask if there’s any chance I could buy a small cutting or if they might offer a discount on the plants because they are all partially eaten.

The garden center employee knows exactly what I am talking about, and shares with me how the plants are being damaged, which is a genuine surprise to me.

The birds are eating them.

You see, all big box stores with garden centers have become little urbanized ecosystems of their own, complete with wildlife. Pigeons, sparrows, finches, the occasional hawk - there are some animals who spend their whole lives living at a big box store. And this Lowes’ indoor birds have been eating birdseed for sale supplemented with plants they enjoy munching on. Hemigraphis alternata is a very enjoyable snack, and so are these begonias in question.

My new begonias - ‘Benigo’ is on the left and ‘Linda Dawn’ is on the right.

My new begonias - ‘Benigo’ is on the left and ‘Linda Dawn’ is on the right.

(Apparently this Lowes had for a period of time in the past put kill traps out to catch the birds, but they have since switched to catch and release at a nearby nature center which is a much more humane policy.)

In terms of pest identification, the birds are good news for me in that I am pretty confident I won’t accidentally and unknowingly introduce one of their birds into my collection - which does happen sometimes with insect, fungal, or mildew infestations.

The garden center employee adds that they were considering clearancing these begonias anyway because the plants have been around since Christmas without selling and now there is all the accumulating bird damage, so I am given clearance prices and happily walk away to give both begonia ‘Linda Dawn’ and ‘Benigo’ a try!

My Social Media

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If you’re reading this from my blog, well, you’re in the heart of my social media already! I share the most content here, and I always publish new artwork on my blog first. However, I’ve been asked by some colleagues and students what my social media presence is like, particularly regarding my professional social media, so let’s get meta! (Also, note that I run my web browser in dark mode, so that’s why all the images below have dark backgrounds with white text. I find dark mode to be easier on my eyes.)

I retweet this blog, meaning that every blog post I make is also put onto my Twitter account. It’s 99% of my Twitter content; once in a blue moon I will tweet something other than a blog post, but it’s quite rare. I don’t reach many new viewers via Twitter since my own activity on the site is so low, but because it takes no effort to retweet these posts I figure I might as well.

I also publish most new artwork on Facebook and Reddit. On Facebook, though I make art posts public, the engagement is almost entirely from friends, colleagues, and former students. Reddit, however, engages complete strangers.

Often, I publish new artwork on Instagram too. I should be more consistent about posting on it, but for me Instagram begins to feel repetitive given my other sites/applications usage. Occasionally, I also share artwork on MetaFilter, which is text-based and a much smaller and more heavily moderated community than Reddit but is in some ways similar.

I have made artwork, reproduction, and commission sales via my blog, MetaFilter, Facebook, and Reddit. Sales are not my primary goal in engaging with viewers through social media - and I really should set up a shop at some point on this website so I can just direct buyers there - but they are another nice indication of audience appreciation!

I'm a Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees Member!

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Back in October, I learned that the Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees had a couple openings through a friend already on the Board - so I applied. In December, I had a virtual interview with City Council, and I recently learned that I was approved! I look forward to serving my community in this function for the next two years.

SCAC BoT Certificate.jpg

Behind The Scenes of Velocity

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Sometimes viewers want to know how a piece of artwork was made, and if there are any in-progress pictures to show the process. I often don’t take as many photos of that as I could; I’m more focused on the creation than pausing for documentation, and I also think that too many process photos can slightly tarnish the magic of the completed piece.

Nevertheless, here’s a photo of the drawing in development of Velocity which underpins the painting! Usually I can get away with mostly only doing a contour and then painting the rest freehand, but this piece is so reliant on form, pattern, and detail that I needed a stronger blueprint for this one.

Amazon.com Subscribe & Save Opacity

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I ordered an item on Amazon, and it arrived not as described. I notified Amazon online of this, and they elected to issue me a refund without my needing to bother with returning the item. Great!

A couple weeks later, I’m scanning through my credit card activity as usual just to make sure there are no surprises, and I don’t see this refund. I wait another two days since this happened right around Christmas and I thought it might be delayed/pending without being listed as such. It still doesn’t appear, and other more recent charges have posted.

I call Amazon Customer Service and ask what happened to the refund. The CSR I got - who was a delight - said that contrary to their text description of what would happen, it didn’t refund onto my credit card but rather via an Amazon gift card. I replied that I’ve made some purchases via Amazon since then, and I didn’t see a positive balance or reduced order total. He said I already used the amount. I asked on what, and this is where it gets interesting - “I” used it on a recent Subscribe & Save order.

Subscribe & Save orders, as of this blog post publication date anyhow, do not show up in your order history, and the price you pay each time is not tracked anywhere on the website that’s viewable to the customer. Furthermore, the email I was sent about the item I was going to receive via Subscribe & Save didn’t mention a gift card balance or reduced cost. Unless I noticed on my credit card statement that the amount of that charge was lower than what the email indicated and connected the dots (which I didn’t), there was no other indication to me for what had happened to my refund.

Amazon gave me another refund since the first didn’t make it back to the original payment method, which was nice of them since I was apparently already secretly refunded. However, I think Subscribe & Save orders and payments should be viewable to consumers on the website order history for transparency and better user experience.

More Ceramics!

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In my last ceramics blog post, I shared a range of planters I’ve created. (When I use the term “planter” for my own ceramic work, I am specifying that I have crafted them with drainage holes. I haven’t done so yet, but if I were to create a piece without drainage holes to house a plant, I’d call it a “cache pot.”)

I am most interested in making planters because of my extensive plant collection, so I’d say that for every non-planter piece I make, I make four planters. But I have made other pieces, including vases and bowls! Here are a few examples. The three vases all make use of my experimental embedding of iron oxide chunks, so they’re glazed in a “clear” that appears as a transparent tan.

Finished Ceramics Are Finally Here!

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Back in January, I began to try to learn about the discipline of ceramics for professional development as an administrator and artist (and maybe even further down the line it’ll be a course I feel capable of teaching, too)! Of course, the pandemic descended right after we had begun to kiln fire and we went remote mid-spring so then there was no more firing for a time which was a barrier to progress.

You may remember my blog post titled Pandemic Productivity which I wrote toward the end of March discussing this topic, and over the spring and summer I generated a number of pinch pot raw ware from home - and an end-of-summer bisque firing was done, so all of those pieces were ready for glazing in early August.

(If you’re unfamiliar with how to make ceramics, you take clay and shape it which when ready is called raw ware. That raw ware is then bisque fired in a kiln. Once bisqued, you typically glaze your pieces and fire them again at a higher temperature. The pieces that come out of that second firing are usually finished, though you can do additional treatments beyond that as well.)

My very limited previous ceramics glazing (I believe one finished cycle only?) had been with Cone 9 glazes, which our gas kiln is theoretically capable of… but the first set of pieces that came out were not only experimental in terms of learning how to glaze but also very underfired due to the gas kiln needing repairs. The underfiring negatively affected their watertightness and texture. We have since fixed the gas kiln, and I do have some pieces from January through March that had been prepared with Cone 9 glazes for my second glazing attempt and are presently still waiting for whenever we next fire the gas kiln.

This fall we reopened Morningside College in person, and our ceramics course began again. It takes several weeks of creation before class bisque firing begins, and then once a decent stockpile of bisque pieces build up students begin glazing. Midway through this fall, I was able to rejoin the cycle by beginning to glaze my pandemic pinchware! The instructor teaching now prefers to fire at Cone 6 with our electric kilns. This meant any color mixing knowledge I had about our existing Cone 9 glazes - minimal anyway - was out the window, and I was starting from square one with the new Cone 6 glazes, many of which didn’t even have sample swatches yet. Again, there was a lot of experimentation and not a lot of control - but in only a few cycles I’m starting to develop some preferences! It’s also nice that these finished pieces have reached the proper temperature and their surfaces are, in contrast to the underfired pieces I’d done before, behaving as intended.

So, here are the first of my finished ceramics after almost a full year of work! All of these are planters with drainage holes, as the last three photos demonstrate. A couple are wheel thrown, and the rest are pinchware. They vary in size but most are relatively small - they’re all approximately 2-5” in diameter. Bigger pots are more time- and material-consuming to make and take up more room in the kiln so I’ve been sticking with smaller ones for now. I’ve made a few bowls (with no drainage holes) and vases, too, which I’ll share in a later post!

As you might imagine, making planters brings my interest in art and plants together nicely in that I can start to house my plants in my own pots! Transplanting during winter isn’t optimal so I’ve only done so where necessary, but here you can see a young Chlorophytum comosum - colloquially referred to as a spider plant - who desperately needed more space and has therefore been upgraded into a Shelby Prindaville planter with a top dressing to complement!

Judging the Sioux City Camera Club Print Competition

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I was invited to serve as a judge for the Sioux City Camera Club’s print competition in mid-October, and it was a really fun experience! The competition was split into two parts: color, and black and white. I along with two other judges rated each entry on technical skill, composition, and interest. I was quite impressed with the quality of the submissions - we have some really talented photographers in our community! Category winners will go on to compete further on a regional level, so I’ll be interested to hear how those photos fare in upcoming competitions.

Judging-wise, I have a lot of experience in assessing artwork in terms of value, color, composition, and so on. I am also expert at Adobe Photoshop, so digital manipulation is totally in my wheelhouse. I am skilled at digital photography, but there’s more there that I’d like to learn, and in film photography I know the basics but haven’t immersed myself in that discipline since undergrad. It was interesting to see how my deep knowledge areas complemented those of the other judges and vice versa.

COVID-19 Anosmia Frustration

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Anosmia happens to be a relatively common symptom of COVID-19, so more people are talking about it of late. I was born with anosmia, which is the term for no sense of smell. (I mostly get by just fine in the world, and in fact I appear to have better color vision as a result, and perhaps my super-powered high-pitch hearing abilities are also related. I do have more exposure risk to toxic fumes, gas leaks, fires, and such, and spoiled food can also be more difficult to discern. My long-term memory is also negatively impacted. So it’s not something I necessarily recommend, but anosmia is and always has been a part of my life.)

One of the more frustrating things about not being able to smell, though, is that people who can smell conflate smell with taste ALL THE TIME. They are not the same sense. Words have meaning. For example, many “flavored” items in the market are in fact scented, which is very frustrating if you don’t in fact experience both because you waste time and money on discovering this inaccurate marketing language. Jolly Rancher candies, Starbursts, Skittles - their various colors and types (strawberry, cherry, orange, lemon, grape, etc.) all taste pretty much the same, and any differences in taste are typically not identifiable as actual fruit differences but rather slight differences in citric acid to sugar ratios. Meanwhile, I can absolutely differentiate a real strawberry from a cherry by taste, and so on. All those “flavored” sparkling waters on the market like La Croix Mango vs. Coconut are all merely scented waters. They are indistinguishable to me. The only truly flavored sparkling waters I’ve found so far are from Spindrift, and they also are 10-15 calories apiece because they do actually incorporate a touch of juice.

This recent op-ed in The New York Times is therefore infuriating. Krista Diamond did not lose her sense of taste. She lost her sense of smell. Ageusia is its own disorder. Words have meaning. WORDS HAVE MEANING.

Specialization and Societies

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When I was a kid, I really liked reading survival fiction. Hatchet, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, My Side of the Mountain… I was down to be a self-sufficient machine. Nowadays, if you are interested, there are people surviving (or as some like to put it, “sur-thriving”) in the wild for weeks to months with very few supplies on various television survival shows like Alone and Naked & Afraid and YouTube channels dedicated to living a fully self-sufficient lifestyle.

As an adult, I have to share that I really like living in a specialized society. (Also, as a vegetarian for ethical reasons, I dislike the emphasis on killing animals that seems to invariably accompany these solo survival experiences.) I grow a lot of plants, but currently am only growing one food-producing plant (my tomato plant), and that was a gift from a neighbor. I know a lot about art, plants, animals, and ecology, and a fair amount about a range of other topics. Nevertheless, I rely on other people for a lot! I buy most of my food from a supermarket, and am fortunate enough to be gifted pretty much else in my diet (aside from my homegrown tomatoes, though I was gifted the plant itself) from gardening friends. My job - college department chair and professor - exists as a product of living in a society. I rent my house, and pay for water, electricity, and trash/recycling removal services. I make use of modern medicine, and have interests and hobbies that depend upon the participation of others for maximum enjoyment. This very blog is a product of the internet, a social network.

We’re living through a pandemic that wouldn’t be a problem if we were all self-sufficient machines that could permanently isolate (as well as one that wouldn’t be a problem if we were all vegetarian…). It sucks. We should do our best to stop COVID-19 spread through wearing masks, pausing on travel and large gatherings, and in general following recommendations from scientific and medical professionals because having a social conscience is important when living with others. But I love the life that I have - which has not only benefited greatly from but is founded on being a specialized member of a society - and while I understand that there are certain negatives that come along with living this way, I nevertheless embrace it as my desired lifestyle. Viva society.

Have You Heard of Cryptic Species?

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I was recently introduced to the concept of “cryptic species” - a term for when there are two or more species being accidentally harbored under one scientific name due to having very similar characteristics. So for instance we humans are all Homo sapiens, but if there did happen to be a mistake and two different species are currently being labelled as Homo sapiens, the non-Homo-sapiens one that got lumped in would be a cryptic species. Furthermore, sometimes there are several species that are so similar-yet-variable that they end up getting tossed all together into a relatively intentional “species complex,” meaning that we’ve understood multiple species exist but also acknowledged we’re not going to be able to reliably distinguish between each individual species in a species complex other than through advanced techniques like lab-based genetic differentiation.

My Aloe bowiea beginning to grow a flower spike.

My Aloe bowiea beginning to grow a flower spike.

How did this come up, you might ask? I have been charmed by my grass aloe, Aloe bowiea, of late and decided to read up a bit on it and in fact its whole category of grass aloes (and every time I say, think, or type “grass aloes” I am reminded of grass-type Pokémon, which is perhaps part of their appeal to me).

Grass aloes are aptly named aloes that are small, thin-leaved, and easily mistaken for grass in habitat - particularly when not in flower. They are not showy plants; they are in fact often considered too plain and small to merit growing as a houseplant. This means that they are rare, but the kind of rare that comes from being overlooked rather than in demand or particularly difficult to grow. And this quality of being overlooked, small, and plain brings me back around to cryptic species, because apparently there are grass aloes that had been cryptic and potentially more still to discover. There’s not a ton of information about grass aloes online presumably at least in part due to their lack of popularity, but I have put in an inter-library loan request for the book Grass Aloes in the South African Veld which I imagine will more than satisfy any remaining curiosity once it arrives!

Summer Plant Highlights

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This is the first summer in at least six years that I have been present to witness and tend to my plants throughout. (Usually I do at least one artist residency, which typically takes me away for anywhere from five weeks to two-and-a-half months, but the pandemic put a pause on that practice.) I’ve been using the opportunity to try my hand at growing a tomato plant as well as attempting to hand-pollinate compatible flowers from my collection. Here are some photos from the past couple months!

Here we have, in slideshow order: A blooming Hoya kerrii, a Dyckia spp. flower spike, two flower buds almost about to open on an Echinopsis subdenudata 'Domino,' my Haworthia parksiana growing several flower stalks, several different images of my blooming Ledebouria spp., my Mammillaria karwinskiana ssp. nejapensis flower crowns, an Ibervillea lindheimeri flower, Rhipsalis mesembryanthemoides with a couple flowers, a blooming Uncarina roeoesliana, an Episcia spp. in flower, a Phalaenopsis flower spike that lasted for about six months (!), a Sinningia spp. flowering in a cloche for greater humidity, my tomato plant with a few green tomatoes in progress, a lush top-view of my Pelargonium dasyphyllum, an evening look at a reflective Haworthia spp., and an errant Phalaenopsis orchid root that grew through a neighboring plant’s felt coaster which I removed post-photo.

Scandals in the Houseplant Hobby

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There have always been scandals in the world of houseplants. Big box stores selling dyed and painted plants, cacti and succulents with dried and dyed strawflowers glued on, injected orchid spikes (spoiler - there are no naturally blue Phalaenopsis), doomed plants in glass baubles, and glued-down top dressing are some common ones. Though more specialized nurseries tend not to commit those no-nos, many do sell tinted tillandsia and single Hoya kerrii leaves without stem cuttings that will never grow without any disclaimers. Some online sellers will purposefully mislabel or sell inert seeds or parts of a plant for propagation that will never be able to grow as well, relying on time, relative cost, and the ever-present risk inherent in attempting to grow seeds or propagate to erase any blame. And now there’s a new scandal rocking the houseplant world, the full scope is still in the process of being uncovered!

Let me first set the stage. If you, like me, have been in the houseplant hobby for decades, you might have noticed that it’s become quite the fad lately. There were (and still are!) some good online forums and blogs fifteen years ago, but recently I’ve witnessed the rise of “plantubers” aka YouTube stars who do surprisingly well discussing plants, Facebook groups, and - though I’m not that active on the platform - I’ve heard tell of Instagram plant influencers, aka plantfluencers. The rise of these various social media houseplant stars and societies has helped shape what is the must-have plant and drives demand for large swathes of new hobbyists. For whatever reason, right now monstera, philodendron, rarer pothos, and calathea are all hot commodities but the variegated and atypically colored ones are by far the most sought after. I actually don’t grow any of those types of plants aside from a small Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ at the moment; I had an early experience killing a calathea and have never felt called to try again, pothos to me seem common as dirt so while I don’t mind them I also don’t prioritize them, and while I like philodendrons including monstera a lot, they’re often large plants and I’d prefer to be able to have ten or twenty plants in the space where one philodendron might live. My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ is a pretty plant though; its new growth comes in reddish orange and then over time it ages to a green. I think it cost either $3 or $4 because I bought it as a baby.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

I have joined or been added to quite a few of the Facebook plant groups over the years, and many are for buying and selling. I’ve always found most of the pricing on Facebook for plants to be overly high, so I think I’ve only purchased maybe three plants total from such listings. It turns out that even bearing that in mind, I was still apparently only in the more reasonably priced groups until a few weeks ago. At that time, I was invited to join two “plant purge” Facebook groups. The biggest is nuts, though I dislike the format and atmosphere of both. These groups structure their sales to be very small quantity buy-now-or-you-miss-it opportunities and build up excitement by dangling the most coveted plants ahead of time without prices and then “opening up” the sale hours to days later. This very intentionally is not meant to encourage calm research and reflection but rather hype, panic, and instant gratification; it’s basically gambling. People are buying individual plants for hundreds of dollars, regularly, in a flurry of adrenaline and a heady sense of exclusivity that rarely is accurate. Enter Philodendron ‘Pink Princess.’ It’s a variegated philodendron that has the same general shape, growth, size, and habit as my ‘Prince of Orange’ but it has green-base leaves with splashes of pink and sometimes cream variegation. It used to be sold for approximately the same price point as other philodendrons - typically somewhere between $6-20 per plant depending on size and store. Its explosion in popularity due to plant influencers means it now typically costs between $100-300 per plant, and that’s when you can find one at all. Pink is a very “in” coloration for the Instagram and Youtube plant crowd.

You now have the backstory. Recently a newcomer variegated philodendron arrived on the scene: Philodendron ‘Pink Congo’. (Newcomers do arrive sometimes - there are hybridizers and tissue culture cloners that introduce interesting new plants to the industry.) ‘Pink Congo’ was positioned and understood to be much like my ‘Prince of Orange’ in its growth habit but with pink leaves instead of orange. However, photos of ‘Pink Congo’ differed from ‘Prince of Orange.’ There were just dark green outer leaves and bright pink inner leaves. A few pictures appeared to show a different type of transition, where green patches started developing on some of the older pink leaves as opposed to the slow and total hue change on the entire leaf as per ‘Prince of Orange.'

From what I’ve read, people started paying $70-100 for ‘Pink Congo’ - mostly on these rabid Facebook groups but also occasionally on nursery websites, Instagram, eBay, and Etsy - and prices escalated from there. Then a knowledgeable hobbyist dropped a bomb on Facebook - the ‘Pink Congo’ was a fake and he had source material from an Indian vendor to prove it. He showed that the pink central leaf coloration was a temporary reaction to being gassed by ethylene and the plant would revert back to its standard green coloration in several months to a year or two and never grow more pink again. The base plant would typically sell in a $4-20 range.

Apparently some houseplant sellers knew it all along and were fine with it. Others didn’t, and decided to eat their own loss in having purchased the plants for resale so as not to lose credibility and trust. Many continue to sell them but added vaguely worded disclaimers that can be easily misinterpreted to give false hope. Meanwhile, a lot of buyers are upset that they dropped triple digits on temporary variegation, but some claim they don’t mind and plan to continue to buy ‘Pink Congo.’ A few have shared a belief that the scandal itself is the hoax, and that if anyone’s plant is reverting that it’s just an unstable variegation rather than a systemic fake.

And that’s the current scandal!

Wait… I did say it was still unfolding, so what’s that about? Apparently, philodendrons are not going to be the only ethylene-treated plants coming out of the import market! (Dun dun dun!) As far as I know, no one’s listed any other implicated plant varieties with specificity yet, but it’s a new ploy to be aware of across the hobby. I don’t know what other plants’ responses to being gassed with ethylene might look like, so any very unusual and new coloration might warrant a critical eye these days.

Not Everyone Experiences the World the Same Way: Counting Stars Edition

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I’ve written about linguistic relativity before but here’s another perception-is-relative reference point. I was recently discussing with some friends how one of their parents has a hearing blip where a certain frequency just doesn’t register for him but he otherwise has normal hearing. I mentioned that I have the opposite problem - there was an extremely popular song a few years ago that hurts me to hear due to the repeated high-pitched screech that’s been accidentally built into the soundtrack.

I have always been confident that it’s accidental and that most people can’t hear it because it is an extremely undesirable sound. If everyone experienced the song the way I do, there’s no way it could be popular; I had to scramble to change radio stations or playlists when it came on because it’s legitimately painful to listen to. To me it sounds like an audio feedback squeal but it’s very high in pitch. If you’ve ever heard a TV set that’s on but not playing, or an elevator waiting for its doors to be unblocked, it’s in that kind of register but piercing. If not - well, I can hear if a TV is on or if someone is blocking elevator doors with their bag even though they’re certain they’re inside because those pieces of equipment do make a kind of whining noise in those circumstances… and I can also hear this horrible sound in the song. If I had to listen to the whole song and then you told me my ears were bleeding a little, I would probably believe you. I can’t think of another song I’ve heard that has this problem.

My friends obviously asked me what song this was. I couldn’t immediately recall because I spent a lot of time trying not to listen to it… but the trauma of the shriek was burned into my brain and I did hear the opening sequence a lot before managing to switch it off so I was able to remember enough preceding lyrics that I could research and ID it as OneRepublic’s Counting Stars. According to Wikipedia, this song reached billboard number two in the US, number one in a bunch of countries, and is the 14th most played video on YouTube as of a few months ago. People in general really like this song.

As would presumably be expected, my friends then listened to it themselves and couldn’t hear it. I wanted to see if I could find any substantiation of my issue with it online for them - and I did! Though as expected, only from a very small minority of people relative to those who’ve been exposed to the song. I don’t know if you’ll find any of this as funny as I did since of course odds are you can’t hear the problem either, but I am amused to have found my people and thought I’d share:

Here’s a Reddit thread about the issue, with timestamps about when it occurs. (A couple responders can’t hear it but don’t recognize that, and so their answers are about normal audio effects. Communication problems do crop up with relativity studies.) Another Reddit user lists it as a ruined song, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Here’s an upset-yet-supportive Amazon review.

Here’s a Twitter thread with the band. (Again, since they can’t hear it, they think people are talking about different sounds which results in a fair amount of confused and inaccurate cross-talk.)

Here’s an edited version of the song that removes the problem, with hilarious comments supporting the change.

Kudos to both the listeners who white-knuckled their way through the song to timestamp it and the editors who then invested time into removing the sounds from the song (there’s more than one edit out there as I guess several people independently wanted to fix it!). I also thought it interesting that most people are describing it as a “squeak,” as to me that’s too diminutive a label for its sharp intensity and implies additional variance in how it’s heard even by those who do hear it. I side with one commenter who instead described it as an “ice pick to the brain.”

One of my friends did follow up to share that upon listening at 25% speed - YouTube offers that option! - she could discern it and found it annoying. So if you want to potentially ruin the song for yourself, you can give that a try.

I wonder what other experiences set each one of us apart from the crowd - both the ones we’ve sussed out and the ones we might never recognize.

Biking the Adams Homestead & Nature Preserve

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The COVID-19 pandemic shut gyms down and canceled artist residencies, so I’ve been attempting to combine alternatives for both by visiting the Adams Homestead & Nature Preserve! It’s located in South Dakota, but given that I live on the tri-state border it’s only about twenty minutes away. There’s a beautiful gravel trail with two joined loops - the River Loop is longer and is a prairie/farmland/forest ride with peeks at the Missouri River, and then the Lake Loop is shorter and combines prairie and beautiful shallow wetlands. Connecting the two is Cottonwood Crossing, which is also prairie/forest but seems to be the prime deer-spotting segment as well.

I’m still in the planning and reference imagery gathering phase, but it’s been a great time. Though I need to find a better way to deter the biting flies that have recently appeared…

Ashlar the Adorable

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I haven’t updated you on my pet gargoyle gecko Ashlar in a while - she’s doing very well, and has even redecorated her cage recently by moving the vine supports around!

Ash 5.jpg
Ash closeup May 2020.jpg

Eating an Ethical Diet

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I’ve been a vegetarian for ethical reasons for over twenty years, and my artwork and writings about my pieces address issues including animal rights, ethics, conservation, and ecological balance. The COVID-19 pandemic is a direct result of our generally poor relationship with meat consumption, including that of endangered wildlife. Now due to meatpacking plants, the city that I live in has topped a variety of coronavirus tracking charts in terms of spread, density, and duration. Iowa is mass torturing and slaughtering pigs as a result of the pandemic’s disruption of the processing and supply chain. Eating meat increases global warming, obesity rates, and an acceptance of cruelty and superiority that can’t help but seep into other parts of our lives.

Here’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times that goes into more detail on all of my above points. I support eating an ethical diet and believe we need real reform in this arena as well.

Black Lives Matter

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Here in the US, there have been massive protests against racism and police brutality; these have spawned global support and protests in cities around the world. I support the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier this week I donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (more commonly referred to by its abbreviation ACLU) to support their work in suing the government and police on behalf of protesters and victims of police brutality and injustice. We need substantive reform.

Here’s a link to the ACLU donation page if you also feel called to support them!

Sansevieria Has Been Subsumed!

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I know we’ve had a lot of craziness of late, but I have another world-altering piece of information for you plant lovers out there who haven’t heard about it yet, so get ready: the genus Sansevieria has been contested for years and it has now been subsumed into Dracaena. Officially, taxonomically, there is no more Sansevieria! Below are a few images of some of my (formerly Sansevieria) species and and flowers if you need a visual aid. They’re colloquially called “snake plants” and “mother-in-law’s tongue.”

In my houseplant-growing years, I’ve been aware of plants switching genera before, but all of those switches only affected a small amount of plants and were relatively easy to swallow. Gloxinia speciosa and Rechsteineria leuchotricha both moving to the genus Sinningia, Philodendron bipinnatifidum changing to Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum, Cotyledon splitting into at least five different genera, and so on.

This switch, though, affects over seventy species that have visual and habit-related signifiers that seem to more narrowly identify them as a subgroup within their new genus compared to the rest of the Dracaena species that are typically grown as houseplants, so I don’t even know if I want to start calling them by their new taxonomic names!

For me and perhaps for most serious houseplant keepers, this is going to be much more of a challenge than Pluto’s downgrade to dwarf planet.