Seals--what we saw in a long walk down on Cape Cod (by Janice)

I went on a long long walk looking for seals this weekend down on Cape Cod. Included some photos here so you could save yourself a lot of walking and see too. Can you show these photos to Ben and Gabi? I've got a new camera ordered that's supposed to arrive in the mail tomorrow. Too bad it hadn't arrived in time for the seal watching walk. Still...my point-and-shoot did a decent job. The friend I went with had a huge telephoto lens though so he was realllly able to zoom in and I was jealous.

Seals! I got to see hundreds (maybe even a thousand!) of seals this weekend.  A friend said he was going to go looking for seals in Chatham, MA, and invited me along for the 20-mile walk. I was stiff and sore afterwards, but the soreness was well worth it! We started with spotting a few lone seals here and there along the way. And then he spotted the colony in the distance. Hundreds of them basking in the sand in the distance. I squinted. They looked like a bunch of rocks to me. We plodded on. And finally, the shapes in the distance did indeed start looking more like seals. And finally we were upon them. We had to keep our distance or else they'd hurry into the ocean and watch us warily, their heads bobbing in the gentle surf. Spent a few hours taking pictures and watching them lounge around napping, quarreling, and scritching themselves with their fins. I had never been so close to seals before (outside of an aquarium) so I was happy to be able to watch them. I wished I had brought a pair of binoculars though so I could get an even closer view.

Peeking at the Monomoy Island Seal Colony in Chatham, MA

A little ways south of Chatham, MA, along the Cape Cod National Seashore, there are Monomoy Islands. It used to be just one island and then a bad blizzard cleaved it into two islands. However, since then, the islands are now reconnected to the mainland. It doesn't show up on the maps but if you look at the satellite images, you can see that you can walk to the Monomoy Islands. Granted, it's a bit of a hike. It's about 9 miles to get from the Chatham Lighthouse to the Monomoy Island Lighthouse that's toward the southern tip of the islands. That's where we turned around. You can get there by boat and they run seal watching trips so that's an easier way to get to see the seals.

 First seal was spotted a little under 2 hours in to our walk. Just napping in the sun. Not a bad idea really.

I kept having trouble with identifying seals from a distance. At first I couldn't tell if the lump I saw was a seal or driftwood. And then after a while, I wondered if I were seeing a live seal or a corpse. We spotted 4 dead eider birds, one was ripped open by a peregrine falcon, blood spotting the surrounding sand with some seagulls standing around hopefully for a bite. Also saw this dead seal with a bit too much sand piled up on him.

Bones of a long dead seal. There were still flies working on picking away at these bones

On left, we kept following these dog tracks for mile after mile. Might've been a coyote though. We didn't see any people tracks near those dog tracks the farther we went. In the middle, that's looking back over the ground we had already covered. And on the right are some seal tracks. You can see where the two front fins plant themselves and then the fainter line of the tail fins dragging along in the middle. Some of the tracks showed seals that went a good ways onto shore, moving right up into the dunes sometimes,

See the seal colony on the sand? They're not rocks like I had thought at first. That's the Monomoy Point Lighthouse in the distance behind them. It's not a working lighthouse any more though.

We walked to the lighthouse and then stopped for lunch. While there, two other men walked up to get some equipment from the keeper's house. They're fixing up the place and had gotten as far as gutting the inside and reshingling and painting the outside. Unfortunately, they'll need to wait for more grant money before they can fix up the inside too. Still, it provides shelter. They said they get researchers out there to do surveys of the wildlife and so they'll be able to stay there while they're in the field.

When the seals spotted us and got spooked, they would shuffle into the ocean and watch us warily from the water. They could move surprisingly quickly on land when they wanted to.

So we changed tactics and tried to sneak up on them from behind the sand dunes. We'd walk on the other side of the sand dunes, hidden from the seals' view. Then drop our packs and crawl up to the edge of the dune and peek our heads over.

This approach worked much better. We could hang out there for a while like this. I wished I had a long telephoto lens that could peek out from behind all those long grasses though.

Even with our precautions, many seals would spot us and watch. Some would continue to keep an eye on us. Others would look up and then slump back down to the sand and go back to sleep.

A watchful grey seal watched us watching them

When we spotted just a single seal at a time, I thought I noticed a different odor and wondered if that was what the seals smelled like. Once there were a bunch of them together, the smell was unmistakably them. The smell reminded me of a farm and is apparently the smell of having lots of them grouped together as well as due to their lack of toilet training. So that smell that reminded me of a barnyard? That's the smell of manure.

Watching them lounge around on the beach. Apparently they like to bask in the sun and nap after they're done feeding. They look like giant slugs. Occasionally they would arch up, swivel slightly rotating their position, and then slump back to the sand and continue napping. Some would nap on their back, fin resting contentedly on their bellies. Some would lie on their side scritching themselves on the belly with their fins, sometimes scratching away at their face and heads. Sometimes they would shove into each other, as if telling someone to move over, and they'd end up bumping chests, seeming to fight for dominance.

This one's yawning. I think. Or maybe he's yowling. We heard all kinds of sounds. There was a background hum of a kind of moaning hooting sound. Mixed in were snorts, farting sounds, yowls that sounded like a cat.

These two look like they're talking

As the tide was coming in, those closest to the water would start getting wet. Then you'd see a group of seals arch up so that their noses and tails were in the air, their body in a U. And then you'd see another seal come shuffling through the crowd and then flop down on a new patch of sand. As that seal passed by, the others would also slump back to the sand, and go back to dozing. It reminded me of being at a movie theater and seeing one row of people stand in a half crouch while someone apologetically brings popcorn back to their seat in the middle of the row.

This little guy was propped up on his fins. Very cute!

 One last seal on the beach. Then I ran out of batteries.

Sydney Brenner and the lift of the ban on Recombinant DNA research

What is this scrumptious dish got to do with Recombinant DNA or Sydney Brenner?  The advantage of dining alone is one can indulge on the food for both body and mind.  I went to a restaurant while Katy was visiting Taiwan.  I wrote a post about Brenner after I received the book of his biography (see photo) and before reading it.  I couldn’t wait to read the story about the role he played in lifting the ban on recombinant DNA research; I finished Chapter 18 (Getting back to DNA) while eating my lunch.

Seeing this Cedar Plank Salmon (Oven roasted tomatoes, crimini mushrooms, shaved fennel and red onion, goat cheese, sautéed asparagus, and sun-dried tomato pesto—I didn’t even mention salmon), Katy would know where I was eating.  Another reason I put this dish as the leading photo of this post is to attract the potential readers—fine food always acts like a magnet—besides, who is interested in reading Sydney Brenner or recombinant DNA?

Sydney is not only a brilliant scientist in the field that he created (his Nobel Prize attests to it), he is also a charismatic, provocative, and entertaining man in science that renders many tales to tell.  I do not intend to explain recombinant DNA in the interest of the length of this post, except saying a few words about its players: Paul Berg (Nobel Prize in Chemistry for recombinant DNA in 1980; Miao-Chih mentioned last year that he was still at Stanford U Med School; he was actually born in that hospital), Stanley Cohen (whose 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine was not directly related to recombinant DNA), Herbert Boyer (no Nobel glory for him, but he was the co-founder of Genentech, now under the arm of Roche pharmaceutical giant).

Simply put; recombinant DNA is to use virus to introduce pieces of DNA—foreign gene—into mammalian cells, thus known as genetic engineering; this is tantamount to playing God!  If it works Berg envisioned the possibility that he could use this system to insert useful genes into human cells; isn’t that the concept of gene therapy that we eventually came to know?  Berg was using SV40 (simian virus 40) which had a potential to cause human cancer.  Biohazard anxieties, followed by activist outcry and Cambridge, MA, banned recombinant DNA research and its mayor (Alfred Pellucid) enjoyed his reputation as society’s scientific watchdog.

A letter was published in Science in 1973 to call upon the scientists throughout the world to suspend voluntarily all recombinant researches.  This letter was letter known as “Moratorium Letter”—the dark days in science—was signed by Berg, Cohen, Boyer, and even James Watson, who regretted later (“I found myself feeling deeply frustrated and regretful of my involvement in the Moratorium Letter.” Watson wrote in his DNA: the Secret of Life)

Nature also published an editorial (July 19, 1974) endorsing the ban saying “. . . calls for a temporary halt on two types of genetic engineering research because of the risk of infecting man with bacterial containing hybrid DNA molecules whose biological properties cannot be predicted in advance.”

Entered Sydney Brenner. Berg sought Brenner’s advice on the ethics of genetic engineering work in early 1970s. Brenner played a leading role in 1975 Asilomar Conference which was a turning point in lifting the ban.  He continued to actively engage in the recombinant DNA debates and ensuing legislative considerations until 1978.  Berg composed a glowing tribute and appreciation to Brenner on his 75th birthday.

It was Brenner’s wit, wisdom, passion, and courage that changed the views of many skeptical scientists or even mocked Erwin Chargaff (who discovered there are same amounts of adenine and thymine, and of guanine and cytosine, in DNA, that helped Watson and Crick to figure out DNA structure),

“ People like Erwin Chargaff said that we were tampering with evolution.  How on earth can one ask scientists to be responsible for something that might happen ten million years in the future?”  In talking about he risk of recombinant, he said, “By multiplying a set of small probabilities we could reduce the hazard to very small numbers, say 10-24, that is 10 to he power of -24 (reciprocal of Avogadro’s number) or even 10-50, that is 10 to the power of -50 (about the reciprocal of the number of elementary particles in the universe.)"

In order to prove the bacteria of interest cannot survive outside the laboratory, he once mixed the microbes into a glass of milk and drank it.  He monitored what came out “the other end” and found no evidence that the bacteria colonize his intestine.

This post is mainly about the incomparable Brenner, the benefit of the recombinant DNA research will be another post.

Suddenly America’s Pastime is here; surprisingly Pirates has won the first two series on the road

Pirates lost its opening home game this afternoon, but it has won two consecutive series on the road before coming home last night.  The first series win against Chicago Cubs was not too surprising, as lowly though the Pirates might be; two of the only four series wins on the road were against the Cubs last year.

But the series win against St. Louis Cardinals was astonishing for Pirates rarely won at St. Louis; may be the dreaded “Meet Me in St. Louis”.

The headline of the Sports page at Observer-Reporter today was “Road to Respectability”; let’s hope Pirates can shake off the “lowly Pirates” image, and people wouldn’t say “to say ‘lowly Pirates’ is redundant” (Photo credit: Observer-Reporter).  Andrew McCutchen, left, and Neil Walker, right, did well for the last two series [plural form of series is also series] on the road.

(4/8/11)

Jer-Yuan Tsai Janice alerted me that Red Sox has lost the first six games of the season, the worst start since 1945. And she wrote, “And they're up against the Yankees next. Oh dear.” I was about to respond, after work, that with Yankees coming to town may be a blessing as no team better than Yankees to rouse the fighting spirit (鬥志) of the Red Sox. It indeed happened as the Red Sox defeated the Yankees 9-6 this afternoon to end a six-game losing streak to start the season. This calls for a parade in the Beantown.

(4/9/11)
Cheng-Hung Lin Orioles also have a very great season opening, but I was sad to hear Manny retired.

(4/8/11)
Jer-Yuan Tsai Yes, it was sad to see Manny Ramirez go, especially the situation under which he retired.  I still have the fond memory of him lining up with David Ortiz in his Red Sox days.  Do I have to mention Red Sox these days? After beating Yankees and winning the only one of its seven games Friday, it was roughed up by Yankess again yesterday. And Beckett has to face C.C. Sabathia tonight, Oh dear!  Being a Pirates fans over the years (18 losing years and still counting; but so far so good), I feel your pain, Janice.

The story of my grandfather

In a post by my cousin, 英毅, I saw my maternal grandparents’ Household Registration (戶籍謄本), an official document, equivalent to our Social Security Card, but contains more comprehensive info, in which I noticed that it was listed “None” for occupation for my grandfather (陳添貴). This is nothing further from the truth.

My grandfather passed away within a few years after we moved to Po-Tzu (朴子), where he lived, though I was fortunate to see my beloved grandmother for more than ten years until I came to the States in 1971. I went back to Taiwan to “claim my bride” in December 1974 and while waiting for the Permanent Resident status, Katy spent nearly six months at my home in Po-Tzu (朴子), during which she got to spend many weeks with grandmother, who came to stay with us from time to time. This reward and fond memory of Katy’s more than compensated our separation.

My grandfather single-handedly built Kao-Ming Abbey (高明寺). He was an intellectual, but not affluent; his incomes from his job of a scrivener among other things barely made ends meet. He spent years of his spare time visiting nearby villages asking for donations. Stories of this endeavor was worthy of a book and not the scope of this writing.

Kao-Ming Abbey (高明寺) is not an ordinary Buddhistic temple. He did away with many pseudo-religious superstitions; he wanted it to be a sanctuary, a holy place of pious worship and of religious study. The meaning of Kao-Ming (高明) is “highly enlightening”; the name says it all. The religious studies and lectures have been held on a regular basis. The mastery of religious study of my second brother (宏二, Miao-Chih’s father) is second to none; he had been a regular lecturer, along with my late second sister, who over the years traveled from Taipei to give her weekly lecture. I was once sitting in that class during one of our visits and was surprised at the breadth and depth of her talk about Buddhism. She was my first teacher (first grade); we didn’t have kindergarten in our village, Xian Tan (下潭—the village Jo and Sean once visited). I owe the good beginning of my education to my second sister. I believe her daughter, my niece, has since taken up her task of enlightening.

The mission of Kao-Ming Abbey (高明寺), under the management of my second uncle (my mother’s brother) and now his son (my cousin), has since expanded to educational field.

The photos of my family were taken with the statue of my grandfather in Kao-Ming Abbey (高明寺) during our visit in March 2009. I may be writing this post with pride and delight, and yet my heart is heavy and sad, reminiscing things and people so dear to me, far away, long ago, nevermore!

Hyacinth in our garden

Spring garden show is on at Phipps Garden, but spring bloom has not yet arrived at our garden.  After reading my hyacinth post, Katy spotted the hyacinth in our garden; they were silently protesting being ignored while exuding their beauty.  I post them here to amend.  

You may not know it that a purple hyacinth stands for sorrow or to say, “I’m sorry”--I am sorry!  The white hyacinth stands for loveliness.

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”—a trip to Phipps to T.S. Eliot to The Waste Land

Yesterday (April 3) we took a trip to Phipps Garden to claim the gift that comes with the renewal of membership.  The Spring Garden show is on.  Sea of tulips, daffodils, hydrangea, hyacinths, and snapdragons greeted us.  Hyacinth is the focus of this post.  Enjoying the delicate beauty of hyacinth, my mind wandered to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

T.S. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 for his pioneer work on present-day poetry (現代詩).  A friend once asked him to write the “interpretation” of his The Waste Land; he promised but never did it.  This is why we can only guess what he meant when he wrote in The Waste Land,

 
You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

They called me the hyacinth girl.

He went to Paris to study for one year in 1910 and befriended a young man, Jean Verdenal, who was killed in a WWI battle in April 1915 (Some said that is why “April is the cruelest month” is the opening line of The Waste Land.)  Eliot’s Prufrock and other Observations (1917) was dedicated to Jean Verdenal.  These lines led to speculation of his homosexuality as the lines are spoken by a man.  In her Painted Shadow (biography of Vivien Eliot), Carole Seymour-Jones also strongly insinuated it.

Narcissus (daffodils) in our garden and in literature

In facing the unusually cold, our daffodils appear dejected bending their heads (垂頭喪氣).  No need to despair; no sooner did the weather warm up than they will raise their heads.

I’ve mentioned there are lots of daffodils in Emily Dickinson’s garden.  There is a line of “And chubby daffodil” in The Sleeping Flowers.

Daffodils are the first flower in spring and that led Emily to say its revealing the secret of sky.  This is her “Secret”

The skies can’t keep their secret!

They tell it to the hills —

The hills just tell the orchards —

And they the daffodils!

I imagine the following sunset scene can be seen in Herman Melville’s Nantucket, where there is still a Daffodil Festival to this day; the following is Emily’s Sunset,

Where ships of purple gently toss

One seas of daffodil,

Fantastic sailors mingle,

And then — the wharf is still.

In her In Shadow we read,

I dared not meet the daffodils,

For fear their yellow gown

Would pierce me with a fashion

So foreign to my own.

Why is a man crazy to go to sea? Herman Melville wrote in Chapter I of Moby-Dick, “Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks gave it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned.”

According to the Greek mythology, Narcissus was drowned and his body turned into the flower now bears his name.  Thus Narcissus (of which daffofil is one) comes to symbolize vanity; one indulges in one’s own beauty.

I wonder why Narcissus was mentioned (in fact, I searched in the eBook and that was the only time mentioned in the whole book) in a novel about the macho whaling on sea.  Then I notice there is a Daffodil Festival (the last weekend in April) in Nantucket, from whence the whaling ship, Pequod, sailed (We read “we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic” at the end of Chapter 22).  So Herman Melville must have seen lots of daffodils at Nentucket in his days. Melville devoted a chapter (Chapter 14) to Nantucket.

William Wordfsworth also immortalizes daffodil, his famous poem of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is also known as The Daffofils.  The following is the first of four stanzas,

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

American Cancer Society Daffodils Day is a major fund raising event, giving the donaors daffodils (the first flowers of spring; a symbol of hope) in appreciation of their contribution.

I wish I could write what role the Narcissus/Daffodil plays in Chinese literature, but I can’t!

Spring bloom is on the way

Few of Emily Dickinson’s over 1700 poems were published in her life time; she was famous for her gardening rather than her poetry.  She had lots of daffodils, tulips and hyacinths in her garden to greet the spring.  Like the winter in her Amherst, ours here is also long and dreary; we definitely need to have spring bloom before summer arrives.

"the snow will guide the Hyacinths to where their mates are sleeping"

Katy planted the bulbs in early November and “the snow will guide the Hyacinths to where their mates are sleeping,” and they did just like what Emily Dickinson wrote about her spring garden.  The winter chills still linger so we on purposely leave those dry leaves around hopefully providing some warmth and comfort.

The other day Peggy wanted us to get Carrots Love Tomatoes (her gift to us for our continuing education in gardening) out to be ready for the gardening, but with the House Gardener being away; nothing stirs in the garden.  Now Katy is back and the tiller in Sears for service, the garden will gradually shake off her winter lethargy and indolence.

It was reported that the First Lady has signed a contract with the Crown Publishing Group to write a book about White House Garden.  I have been writing about our garden, where is my agent for the publisher?

(comments from Facebook)
黃壬辰 要不要先把房子漆成白色 ? (You may want to paint the House white?)

Jer-Yuan Tsai 樓 上的一語道破 (what you said is to the point). By the way, the “President Palace” (the first known name) used to be called the Executive Mansion or just the Mansion (it was Lincoln’s Mansion) until 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt moved in and changed the name to White House. 

WaxApple (蓮霧) is the queen of the fruit for Joy and our heartfelt thanks to friends

If WaxApple (蓮霧) were allowed to bring to the States, Joy’s suitcase would be filled with them.  Upon her arrival at airport on March 22, Joy was greeted with a bag of fresh delicious WaxApple (蓮霧) through the kindness of Dr. and Mrs. Eric Chung-Cheng Wang, who brought Katy to pick her up at airport.  It was midnight when they arrived at Dr. Wang’s home and Dr. Wang had to leave home before 6 AM next morning to attend a surgery.

Joy’s trip also ended with eating lots of WaxApple (蓮霧) as grandma and aunt (Katy’s sister), along with Katy and Joy, took the early bus (4AM) to the airport and they also brought lots of WaxApple (蓮霧); in fact, Joy had to ‘devour’ them before landing at Tokyo Narita Airport.  So Joy began to eat WaxApple (蓮霧) the moment she landed at Taipei Airport and she was still eating after leaving Taiwan and everyday in between.

Katy’s and Joy’s visit was made much more convenient, comfortable and enjoyable through the hospitality of our friends (Dr. Yun Chen, Dr. Eric Chung-Cheng Wang and Dr. Lawrence Sun in Kaoshong).  They took the trouble picking up, driving around and providing the most comfortable stay; this was done in the midst of their busy schedule and that made us all the more grateful.  Dr. Yun Chen brought Katy to the Taipei International Flora Exposition; Katy was very glad to meet and know Dr. Chen’s parents.  Mrs. Wang also took Katy and Joy for sightseeing that included a porcelain museum. Our heartfelt thanks are due to all of you.