Another delightful neoichnology find was seeing this red oak leaf get blown by the breeze and drag its petiole in beautiful elliptical loops- looking like many of Hitchcock's "trails of worms". I saw this on Mount Pocumtuck in Deerfield.
My squinty Yellow Labrador, Ida, cooling herself in the garden soil near my official Nation Weather Service rain gauge. Ida is my fourth Lab or Lab/cross. Before her came Bessie, Chloe and Nellie.
This Barred Owl met me each evening on my drive home from picking Orion up at Deerfield Academy.
Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. You can see both gas and dust tails. Obviously the comet of the 20th century! This is in my yard and the light from my kids bedroom illuminates the trees on the west side of the house.
September 9, 1997 and I am exulting in the opening of the Sanderson Academy's new building. I was Chairman of the Building Committee for the 5.2 million dollar school, built on 34 acres. I am sitting in the library. Back to seersucker shirts.
Always birding, I get a new life bird while visiting my brother in North Carolina. Peeking out is a Red-cockaded Woodpecker- a bird on the endangered species list.
In December 2001 I visit my daughter, Rachel, who was spending the semester at the Biosphere2 in Oracle, AZ, just north of Tucson.
The summer before, in August 2001 We spend two weeks camping and hiking in the Olympic National Park. In the last few days we drop down to Mt. Saint Helens.
My favorite Birthday activity is climbing Mt. Monadnock on October 12th each year. Sometimes it is clear and sometimes not...
In 2004 I photographed more than 150 species of wildflowers in the woods and fields around our land. Here is one of my favorites, the Bottle Gentian.
I also have had a wonderful year with my orchids, having 6 different hybrids blooming at once. Here is one of my Oncidiums.
A Pleiospilos nereii, January 2005 from Southeastern Africa. Our greenhouse is particularly suited to the succulents and Euphorbia of SE Africa and Madagascar.
Same locale, a lovely Adenium obesum in January 2005.
My wonderful Epiphyllum "callisto", with a flower as big as your face.
The Transit of Venus on June 8, 2004. Photographed in Ashfield by my son Orion, using a digital camera and my Criterion 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain.
A Ruffed Grouse feeding at our flowering crabs in December 2004.
My son Orion and I visit the Pember Museum, 30 years after I worked there as Curator. We had gone up to Granville, NY to visit the red slate quarry of Ritchie Brothers to order 600 square feet of slate tiles for our first floor family room.
On September 16, 2004 Orion and I finish the big project of the summer, laying the red slate floor and firing up the new soapstone wood stove.
My three children, New Year's Eve 2004. Rachel, now married, attends U of Maryland Law School. Nate, also married, now works for Highfleet in Baltimore after a few years with Lockheed-Martin at the Army Research Lab. Orion is a Senior at Swarthmore College. They represent my greatest achievement.
The Pratt Museum- a photograph by College photographer Frank Ward.
Also taken by Frank Ward, here I show the dinosaur tracks to attendees of Alumni Weekend.
This is my favorite task at the museum- waxing poetic in the track room!
I show 1/7 and explain the controversy over feather impressions in the 200 million year old slab.
Holding forth.
The Bassett Planetarium, ready for a show.
Kate Wellspring, Collections Manager for the Amherst College Museum of Natural History is the best colleague I have ever worked with. Here she calls Profs. Whitey Hagadorn and me to task for wandering off tour in the new building.
I had the great pleasure of taking some 600 photographs at Thanksgiving 2004, when Research Castings, Int. of Canada disassembled the Pratt Museum's displays.