5-3-12 0612 Train #66 Amtrak DC to Boston, Davisville RI.
After a night of slow progress, we've turned into a commute train and are flying along like a TGV through a rainy dawn. This is the catboat and saltmarsh section of the trip, Lots of boats still in winter shrink wrap in the little marinas, And the rain makes me a little anxious about my plan to spend a week in Woods Hole working on catboat 'Susie P' and fishing skiff 'George B'. My mind is lurching around the aisles of my diazepam and ibuprofen treated travelbrain, so buckle up,this may be a bumpy ride.
Yesterday I left Silver Spring after a night in the hospitality of Liz and Ray and their aging Shiba-Inu Sessi and joined the team for our meeting at the AAMC offices to consult regrding the Florida medical school project. I love walking around DC, because sooner or later you will pass the offices of anyone who is anyone. Who would have thunk that the World Wildlife Fund would have a whole building? And so close to Tanzania House. The meeting was over by about 2 PM, and I asked to be dropped off at the National Zoo.
We are just pulling into Providence. As you probably know, the automotive experiencer of Providence RI is now a little like a sedate roller coaster as I 95 flies over on its way, like a great river,all the way south to Miami. The train gives you a Bladerunner's eye view of the concrete and steel that holds all this up, and the various small camps underneath the prosperity. Turns out we will sit here for 15 minutes. Just to be sure I don't make the 8 oclock bus to Woods Hole,I guess.
Yeshi taught me a a verse of a song some time ago
"I wish I lived in a kind of a zoo
All of the animals would be you
And when it came to feeding time
I'd....feed....you, pretty baby!"
Back in 1954, all 6 of us Steinbach's moved en famile to DC accompanying my father who had a one year appointment as Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation. Burr was one of the generation of biopoliticians that came roaring out of WW II intent on creating a new face for scientific research. He and George Wald had been the first National Research Council Fellows at U Chicago, and the one year appointments in the 50's were one of the ways that NSF was integrating itself into the very fabric of scientific support. Out in Bethesda, the National Institutes of Health was going one step further, and actually DOING the research on site. In any case, I went to Alice Deal Junior High School, just off Connecticuit Avenue. Each morning we arriving juniors were met by a gauntlet of student from the High School across the street who shook us down for any lunch money we might have. As a boy, I was assigned to Print Shop ('teach them a useful trade skill'), just as allthe girls were assigned to Home Economics. We all took Latin, and every once in a while some phrase like 'Parva puella pulchra est' will shoulder itself past all the english/german/spanish gemisch and appear on the battlements of my aging mind.
Because I was a very young 8th grader and chubby (the gym instructor remarked 'you jump pretty good for a fat kid', confirming my worst fears about why Peggy,the girl next door, was not immediately falling in love with me) with barely peach fuzz to be seen on any cheek, my social life wasn't m the richest. So I took solace in dodging out the back to avoid the after school shake down, and tkaing the bus down Connecticuit Ave to the Zoo.
At the time, the National Zoo was probably a solid Level II with elements of level III. Meaning it was well past the hideous cat house smells and mangy small mammal house of the Zoo we visited in Cairo, but had only a few educational displays, an no real pretense of support for scientific research. Like all large level II comparables (San Francisco, San Diego, Regents Park, Jardin des Plantes) it had lots of species but minimal labeling. The level III components were mostly engraved bakelite cage tags with maps of the world, and sometimes a stern 'ENDANGERED' placard.
Mai Ziang and Tien Tien are expecting a cub any day now, so there is a 24/7 video watch . I too watched over the shoulder of the volunteer observers in the control room on site. I regret to say that I havent been able to get the PandaCam on line,,or for that matter the Naked Mole RatCam either..but perhaps its a Amtrak bandwidth problem; you might want to try, http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/WebCams/default.cfm. Mai Ziang was acting like some other pregnant mammals I have known, so the happy news should be coming soon.
The Pandamonium exhibit, with extensive very attractive if artificial rock grottos and lotsof home grown bamboo is definitely Level IV..and in general so is the rest of the National Zoo these days. I can just hear Amalia and Joaquin saying brightly 'Not our Grandfather's Zoo!!'. Fewer species, but each 'house' has not only lots of explanations of everything including poop, but also a transparent research facility (as opposed to the secretive hidden offices where the keepers I knew as a 8th grader lurked to smoke). By the way, as poop goes, Panda poop is apparently a vibrant although limited quantity source of biofuel.
At the other end of the charismatic megafauna spectrum, there is a Komodo Dragon exhibit...it was closed but that didnt stop one of the residents from parading around in site of us dragonmavens. The open uplands of Komodo island is probably the only place where an incautious tourist could actuallyfind themselves in a real life Jurassic Park situation..you know,where the Velociraptors start picking off the ecotourists? Thats because Komodo's do actually kill and eat people...on Komodo and a few other contiguous islands, they are the top predator. Blue forked tongue flicking out to taste the environment a good two feet long!!
There is a fantastic Amazonian reptile exhibit with those incredibly beautiful and amazingly toxic little frogs that are high up on the list of casualties from global climate change. The elephant compound is getting redone, and will be roomy and attractive to even the most discriminating pachyderm.
And its free!!
OK, we are heading into BackBay, time to pack up and send this before I have a chance to censor it, Let this be a lesson to you about brain function after a night on Amtrack in the company of mind bending drugs like Ibuprofen.
Aloha
