Photography, Chemistry, Ecology, etc.

Each semester for the past one and a half years, my school, SUNY-ESF, has hosted a stream cleanup and water quality assessment project along waterways in the Syracuse-Chittenango area to help improve the health of the waterways and to educate students, via firsthand fieldwork, about how to accurately assess the quality of a stream or a river. At the same time, we try to help cleanup these waterways in an effort to improve overall water quality, health of the aquatic ecosystem, and the natural grandeur of the waterway by removing trash and debris.

Last year, I helped spearhead the first ever Adopt-A-Stream event hosted by SUNY-ESF and maintained the role as a member of the executive planning committee. It was an incredible opportunity that I was given, to work alongside new people and collaborate on such a substantial project. Aside from helping to plan the event, I helped remove debris and took film photographs with my old Asahi Pentax Spotmatic at one location along Chittenango Creek.

This year, instead of helping plan the event, I was appointed as one of the two photographers for the event. My position was not as high ranking as the previous year, but it was just as integral to the entire project. My friend Anthony and I were the two photographers for the Adopt-A-Stream event and we traveled from one location, where SUNY-ESF freshman and other student volunteers were working, to the next. We traveled with some friends who were initially supposed to be chauffeurs for the freshman, but were instead chauffeurs for Anthony and I. So the six of us traveled in a tiny, five seater Honda Fit all day from one location to the next. I won't say it wasn't cramped, but it wasn't anything to complain about either. We had a great time together, driving around and stopping by locations to shoot some photos.

Fortunately, the weather was magnificent and we were able to make it out to Chittenango and Pratts Falls. Chittenango Falls is a bit larger than Pratts Falls and while we were there, a small rainbow formed at the top of the falls due to the perfect homogenization of ultraviolet light and airborne dihydrogen monoxide. I was able to catch a few nice photos of the resultant and couldn’t have been happier with the day.

A Sense Of Community

It's not very often that a student here at ESF gets to venture off campus and into the real-life communities of Syracuse without a vehicular mode of transportation. This makes interaction with fellow residents of the city of Syracuse practically impossible. Most people I know can't even picture Syracuse as a friendly or welcoming neighborhood given all the news coverage they see about drugs, violence, and poverty and almost nothing positive. Today, however, was different for my friend Anthony and I. We were given the opportunity to volunteer within the community for ESF's Saturday Of Service at a small community garden known as the West Newell Street Community Garden. I was excited to finally get out and play in the dirt for the first time this year and it was just the outlet I needed to break away from the routine.

While we were there, we met some very nice people including the two ladies who oversee the garden, Mable (not Marble) and Jonnell, a Syracuse community geographer and an integral part of Syracuse Grows. There was also a landscape architecture graduate from ESF who has been working there for a while, named Jessie. She seemed to really enjoy helping out there and being able to apply her knowledge and skills as an LA. She helped the coordinators plan for a more native-to-Syracuse garden that would utilize some indigenous management techniques that she probably learned at ESF. It was nice to see a community garden that was under such good care and was operated in such an organized manner. Within the garden, there were raised beds that would soon be home to various vegetable and flowering plants. In the front of the garden were beds for flowering plants, behind those were beds for strawberries and other vegetable plants, to the side of those was a small plot for healing herbs like yarrow and heal-all, and the rest was for anything else they would decide to grow this spring and summer.

My initial task was to rake up all the leaves, with Anthony, that were toward the back of the garden in order to prepare it for a prescribed burning to control weeds (in a natural and more indigenous way!) and ultimately for tilling and planting. Soon after I began, Mabel could see that this was a one man job and had me instead move onto clearing all the Virginia creeper off the back fence. Virginia creeper is one of those plants that causes you to go insane, sustain all sorts of injuries (including nearly dropping a pair of garden sheers onto your face while attempting to cut it free from tree branches), and basically pushes you to the point of giving up on the plot of land in has taken over. Luckily, with some determination and a sharp pair of garden sheers, I was able to clear the fence and surrounding area of the problem weed.

After that was all done, I continued on to cut down some box elder trees that were a bit in the way, picked up trash that had hopped the fence from the parking lot/dump site of the Syracuse street sweeping company next-door, and tore up yet more Virginia creeper before calling it a day. Despite my ongoing rant about how much of a nuisance Virginia creeper is, I didn't mind doing the work one bit. The reasons being that I felt like I was putting forth an effort toward a worthy common cause that would benefit many other people besides myself, I felt it was a wonderful way to spend an otherwise boring and unproductive Saturday, and it's just something I've always done and don't mind doing again and again. Helping out a community is definitely what drove me the most though. It gave me a feeling of accomplishment and significance, knowing that I was able to meet new people and was given the opportunity to work with a community on a project that benefits a commonwealth. So, your job for this spring and summer is to follow suit and make yourself feel good by helping out others and volunteering in your community. Happy Earth Week!

Dorm Room Gardening

One of the best things a college student can do to improve concentration, study habits, and social atmosphere is to furnish their room with an assortment of plants that would do well with minimal to moderate sun. During my freshman year of college, that's exactly what myself and many of my floor mates ended up doing in order to create a better atmosphere on our floor. Being students at an environmental science and forestry college with eight greenhouses on top of one of our buildings, it was a very easy to fill our floor lounge with plants to a point where it began looking like a greenhouse itself. That lounge contained bamboo, succulents, and other large plants that apparently thrive indoors. Visitors often compared it to a flourishing jungle, although it was far from that. It was a very pleasant place to be and study in though. Every other floor lounge in the residence hall was barren and lifeless compared to ours.

During the late portion of the spring semester, I started a bunch of my own vegetable seeds that I would transplant to my garden back home once summer vacation started. I must've had over fifty peat moss and terra-cotta pots full of soil that would soon become home to an array of nascent plants sitting on my window sill. I had peppers, bamboo, tomatoes, soybeans, basil, and the two jade plants and the coffee plant that I still have today. I cannot begin to describe how much more comfortable my room was, not only to me, but to everyone that visited my room. They were conversation starters from the beginning. People would come in to see how they were doing and, since my room was also a nursery for other peoples' plants, they would often tend to and water them. It was one of the best ways to encourage social interaction, especially at an environmental school. My dorm windowsill garden allowed my room to maintain an atmosphere that encourage learning, sharing, and friendships. We had dozens of study parties, social gatherings, and knowledgeable discussions in my room frequently and I think the plants helped to harbor such activities.

Before I left for school for my freshman year, a neighbor of mine back home told me I'd probably have a miserable time because of troubles adjusting to a new location, higher level classes, huge assignments, and a new social atmosphere. Thanks to my openness, my friendliness, and my desire to meet and interact with new people, that wasn't the case. My plants helped me create bonds with my floor mates based on a common interest. Creating a dorm windowsill garden was one of the best things I think I've ever done. This year (my last year in dorm housing!), I have started yet another dorm windowsill garden containing poppy flowers, my jade plants, and my coffee plant and for the next 22 days (until I leave for home on May 6th) you can see how it's doing on my Folia page. Of course, after that those plants will just be moved to my "Backyard Garden" where you can continue to check up on them, if you're interested.

Arbitrary Thoughts On A Daily Basis

Yesterday I went about my usual Thursday activities with many random thoughts on my mind. I made a mental note about just two of those myriad thoughts. One was to do some online research about the mechanics of a sneeze, also known as a sternutation. A sternutation is defined as a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs. In my quest for information, I came across an article from WebMD's Sexual Health Center that discussed the occurrence of sneezes in a few people worldwide that happened as a result of sexual thoughts they had. Seriously, there are people who sneeze when they think dirty thoughts. If you're interested in reading further, look here.

I didn't realize how complex the whole process of sneezing really was until this point. Besides thinking dirty thoughts, I read about many other stimuli that may trigger sneezes such as foreign particles passing the nasal hairs and reaching the nasal mucosa, sudden exposure to light (the result of which is formally known as the photic sneeze reflux), and the fullness of the stomach following a large meal.

Another interesting bit that I thought I should share is the fact that it is physically impossible for an individual to sneeze while sleeping. This is simply because the body is in a state wherein motor neurons are not stimulated and reflex signals are not relayed to the brain due to REM atonia. Task one accomplished!

The other task was to research the aromatic compounds that are present in soil and give it that pleasant aroma. Being a vague topic, I was not able to find any information about it upon initial research, but just as I began writing about it, I looked one last time and came across an article that explains it in quite a detailed fashion.

According to an article, written by Whitney Eng, that appeared in The Brown Herald Tribune on Oct. 2, 2007, Professor of Chemistry David Cane, Jiaoyang Jiang GS, and Xiaofei He PhD'07 have discovered the enzyme that creates the chemical compound responsible for the sweet aroma of soil and the earthy taste in drinking water. 

That organic compound is commonly known as geosmin. Geosmin is a Greek word that literally translates to "earth smell". It is also responsible for the earthy taste in beets and the strong earthy aroma that occurs in the air when rain falls in an area after a dry spell of weather. Geosmin is produced by bacteria in soil and by blue-green algae in water. Task two, accomplished! So there you have it, two very unrelated topics that represent a portion of the thoughts streaming through my head on a daily basis.

Also, while I'm on the topic of interesting organic compounds in nature, I came across this very interesting NPR article the other day by Robert Krulwich that discusses the processes that ants have developed to let their counterparts know when an ant has died and what chemical is responsible for alerting the other ants in a colony. He also discusses one scientists ingenious and somewhat comical methodology for determining the chemical signal that declares an ant has deceased. You can find the article here.

Salutations!

Greetings to all those who may find themselves reading this post, and hopefully future posts on my newly established blog, Humus & Peat-a. Now, you may be saying to yourself, "Well that's a ridiculous name! He spelled hummus wrong and who is this Peat A. fellow?!" So, in an effort to clear up any misunderstandings about the title of my blog, it is the result of the long and arduous task of finding a clever name that reflects both my interests and my personality.

Let's break it down like this: I like food. I like all kinds of food and foods of various cultures. I especially like Middle Eastern food (hummus and pita included). I also am quite fond of humus (that lovely smelling earthy stuff you find on the ground) and bogs, for they contain sphagnum peat moss (the stuff that makes up the squishy ground upon which you walk in a bog). So I've established three important aspects about my blog's name. It represents my love of healthy, cultured food, my interests in the environment as a wetland restoration ecologist, and my enjoyment of ridiculously silly word play.

I must not fail to mention that these topics are not all you'll read about in this blog either. Topics I will most likely discuss include, but are not limited to: coffee, food, music, computers, technology and design, photography, stop motion videography, gardening, bicycling, camping, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, indigenous culture/land management, nature, household chemical alternatives, frugal living, DIY projects, science, politics, and my friends. So, I look forward to posting many more blog entries that you, the reader, may find somewhat interesting and maybe, at times, a little inspiring.