Author: David Gorsline

Postcards from Ohio: October 2024

I made another road trip to Dayton and environs, primarily to inspect new memorials for Mom, and secondarily to see… stuff.

the bench in its settingthe plaqueMom’s new bench in Stillwater Prairie Reserve is looking quite sharp, although it appears that the plaque has already acquired a bit of scratchiti.

Also spotted at Stillwater were several Eastern Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger).

where am I?In Greene County, I walked Sibenthaler Fen and Russ Nature Reserve. I do like a well-executed trail post. The lat-long is a nice touch.

I'll get the next oneheading downtownSome transit geekery: I rode the Cincinnati streetcar up to Findlay Market for a spot of lunch.

As for Cincinnati’s two connector expressways linking I-75 and I-71, the short Norwood Lateral (Ohio 562) might be the only freeway in the country whose control cities on the big green signs are the same at each end, namely, Norwood, because that’s the only place the freeway goes. On the other hand, Ohio 126 is only signed Ronald Reagan Highway—because it won’t take you anywhere useful, mayhaps? Ohio 126 smooshed property values on Mom’s condo when the road was built to Reading Road.

my ride's herenext busAnd I rode Dayton’s 4 bus downtown, with a return on the 7. The 4 was running trolleys and diesels, while the 2 and 7 were only diesels. I rode bus #1958, pictured at left; in the photo at right of bus #2064, the trolley poles are easier to see. There are no trolley wires at the end the the 7’s run, but the new hybrid equipment allows the driver to “drop the poles” for a stretch. Downtown I saw buses on the 8 doing that.

worth a shotI tried this place for dinner, and it was pretty good. I broke my vegetarianism to sample goetta.

The Cradle Will Rock

INSeries’s captures some of the gist of the original, improvised presentation of Marc Bltizstein’s juicy, polemical The Cradle Will Rock, with a solo upright piano on stage and actors singing from the aisles of the house for a couple of numbers. Headgear is important here: the eight members of the liberty committee chorus are achieved with four singers, each wearing a hat on their hands; Mr. Mister (Rob McGinness, doubling Reverend Salvation) has a tiny silver top hat attached to the side of his head—maybe it was liberated from a Monopoly set?

Lighting in the Baltimore Theatre Project on Thursday’s opening night was dodgy, with dark spots and flickers that were unlikely to be expressionist choices.

  • The Cradle Will Rock, text and music by Marc Blitzstein, directed by Shanara Gabrielle, music direction by Emily Baltzer, INSeries, Baltimore Theatre Project, Baltimore

Some news can be made to order. —Mr. Mister

Some links: 104

Clearwater Nature Center mushrooms

Saturday, Megan Romberg and Georgie Hardesty led a collecting foray for mycologists of various experience levels at Cosca Regional Park’s Clearwater Nature Center. The building itself, perched on a rise, has an attractive series of walk-ups/ramps leading to it, with a water feature. Most interesting finds (to me) were a nifty bolete, Retiboletus ornatipes (pending iNat confirmation) and a wee scatter of Fenugreek Stalkball (Phleogena faginea).

The Comeuppance

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ new play The Comeuppance is a bit too topical, a bit too on-the-nose, and one wonders how well it will age. Set in 2022, the text name-checks nearly every conflagration that has beset the United States in the past 20 years, from 9/11 to 1/6, without engaging too deeply with any of them—burgeoning gun violence perhaps being the exception. It takes place on the front porch of Ursula, one of five friends and enemies meeting up before their twentieth high school reunion, the porch well realized by a minimal set designed by Jian Jung. The show is heavily expository in roughly its first half; call it, maybe, a multi-ethnic Return of the Secaucus 5.

Jacobs-Jenkins, himself approaching middle age, confronts the prospect of death head on with this work. The turning-40s is the age when many of us realize that we’re not actually going to live forever. He brings Death on stage by a tidy maneuver, one easier done than described. The (what—spirit? mojo? voice?) quintessence of Death passes among the five players, who each from time to time break character and address the audience directly as Death—starting with Emilio (expressive Jordan Bellow), who may serve as the playwright’s voice. Emilio is a conceptual/sound/installation artist working in Berlin; he has abandoned his early work in photography, saying that he had become “tired of mimesis.”

Emerging from the high-energy agita and decades-old recriminations, Kristina (TayshaMarie Canales) has a lovely monologue in which she questions the turns that her life has taken.

The title of the play is a bit of a tease, or perhaps a misdirection, or maybe a suspension.

  • The Comeuppance, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Morgan Green, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with Wilma Theater, Washington

VNPS 2024: Maple Flat and Cowbane Prairie

Two field trips for this year’s annual meeting, both of them in the vicinity of Stuarts Draft on the western slope of the Blue Ridge.

sinkholeGary Fleming led the walk to several sinkhole ponds in the Maple Flat area of the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest. Limestone/dolostone account for the sinkholes, but unlike the karst landscape of Lee County, here the soft stone is overlaid by alluvium/colluvium and a layer of clay. One of the specialties of this site is Boltonia montana, only recently scientifically described.

wet prairieNate Miller was our guide to Cowbane Prairie NAP, a wet meadow. I would have done well to bring my LaCrosse boots. I didn’t get great images of any of the specialties here (and they were not in flower, anyway). The group enjoyed multiple plants of Bottle Gentian (Gentiana clausa). On a goldenrod, a Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata) made for a nice image, after cropping. It’s probably time for me to start paying more attention to orthopterans.

Seven Bends State Park

Continuing my chase for the 30-park pin, I stopped at Seven Bends State Park on my way down to Harrisonburg and the Virginia Native Plant Society annual meeting. This park lies within oxbows of the Shenandoah River, and is perhaps of more interest to paddlers than hikers. The Gokotta Trail is bordered by nearly a mile of Yellow Crownbeard; the bees kept in hives near the interpretive area appreciate it. A Groundhog (Marmota monax) was a little shy; a Blue-ringed Dancer (Argia sedula) held still for longer.

Alexandria NABA Butterfly Count 2024

good habitatThe Alexandria count in 2023 at Huntley Meadows Park was pretty much washed out. Scouting for this year indicated that there wasn’t much in bloom on the boardwalk side, so I was reassigned to the hike-bike trail side and trip leader Ana. Oh, what a difference! Huge swaths of Bidens, full of skippers, including Ocola Skipper (Panoquina ocola) (new to me this count week) and Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus).

how many do you see?We did take an hour on the boardwalk as well: the highlight of this side was a thistle with a half dozen Great Spangled Fritillaries (Speyeria cybele) nectaring on it.

And snakes and spiders and shorebirds and more wildflowers and more butterflies.

Calvert County birding

As we were introducing ourselves for today’s bus trip to look for birds in Calvert County, Maryland, I made an offhand remark that I stopped to look for tiger beetles, too.

We birded the pier at North Beach, found some nice gulls, had some lunch, and were starting to pack up. I was leaning against a rail looking down at a patch of sandy beach. And I looked for a minute or two—doesn’t hurt to look, right? And holy cow! My life Bronzed Tiger Beetle (Cicindela repanda) showed up.

Pocahontas State Park

cheery trail signBefore returning home, I stayed over an extra day to bag one more state park under the Trail Quest program. Pocahontas State Park was rather quiet on a weekday. I rambled on the yellow-marked Forest Exploration trail in my backup car sneakers (as my usual sneakers were still drying out). Pocahontas has a network of trails designated and graded for mountain bikes, but the Forest Exploration trail is designated for foot traffic only. Much of the walking was on sandy substrate, with plentiful bits of isinglass scattered about. Gunfire, alas, from nearby private land was regularly audible. Not too much in bloom, but I found a solitary Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata) in flower and fruit.

Richmond the River City

Genevieve Wall led a two-day foray to several sites along the James River in Richmond and environs. We took a short walk in the area known as Pony Pasture, along the upper reaches of the whitewater that courses through the city. A fine Tawny Emperor (Asterocampa clyton) made an appearance. At a second site downriver, we crossed the humpty-backed footbridge to Belle Isle; the bridge is suspended from the Route 301 bridge.

at the dockhigh meadowThe next day, now fully in the Coastal Plain, as we waited for the ferry to Presquile National Wildlife Refuge, some of us spotted an Atlantic Sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) breaching. The refuge is now a grownup island, as long ago a channel was cut across the base of its peninsula to facilitate river barge traffic (the Turkey Island Cutoff). Meadows in the refuge are relatively clear of most non-native invasives; however, the management plan calls for letting natural succession to take place, which is expected to clear out the infestation of Clematis terniflora. Heavy morning dew on the mown paths plus poor planning on my part resulted in soggy feet for most of the day. An interesting ode caught our attention, but she turned out to be “just” a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). We wrapped up the day with a contemplative paddle in canoes from Deep Bottom Park.

Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve

from the end of the boardwalk 1from the end of the boardwalk 2The Grass Bunch met, in scattered fashion, at Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, after waiting out a passing thundershower. In the past, field trips to Dyke Marsh (say, for birding) have usually petered out at about the point where the trail turns east. but this time, C and I walked the length of the trail, to the end of the boardwalk. There are some pleasant views from this point.


After scooting through the non-natives near the trailhead, we turned up a couple plants in flower that I had not recorded before, Cutleaf Coneflower (Rudbeckia lacinata) and Biennial Beeblossom (Oenothera gaura).