Here is a selection of various insects visiting flowers in bloom, mostly daisies, around the backyard, taken in quick succession—and not including the elusive ones that were harder to photograph at the moment. What celebrity bug friends can you find and identify near you?
Opening in 1962, the same year as Eero Saarinnen’s TWA Flight Center at JFK, the Washington Dulles terminal did not meet the same practical obsolescence as its contemporary thanks in large part to a foundational masterplan researched and put together by design duo Charles and Ray Eames (see also here, here and here) with the rest of the design team (Saarinnen included), which premised the national hub in the below1958 animated short as modular and expandable airport.
While not stinting on aesthetics, consideration and convenience for the traveller were primary concerns in taking the long term perspective and creating a transportation artery that would not only connect the terrestrial world but beyond as well. Transiting through US airports is mostly these days a traumatic through forgettable experience and while many of the other amenities might be lost for the average passenger, a ride on Washington-Dulles’ mobile, vaguely militaristic “Departure Lounges” that still to this day ferry travellers to and from their planes rather than navigating endless, labyrinthine corridors of jetways are indelibly memorable. Learn more at Citylab at the link above.
On cue, our peonies (Paeonia officinalis oder echte Pfingstrose) are beginning to come into full bloom, coinciding with their namesake holiday Pentecost (Whitsunday, Pfingsten, seven weeks after Easter).
The plant was classified by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (who formalised the binomial nomenclature above) in the family Paeon, retaining the mythology that an apprentice of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, began to surpass his master—owing to the fact that mortals probably respond better to treatment regimes and in general clinically more remarkable than immortals—and Zeus transformed Paeon into a peony to spare him from Asclepius’ wrath. The flowers have a long history of use in traditional medicine, both in the East and the West and have pharmaceutical merit.
Whether diverted, enlisted as part of the sewer system or simply buried under development, the notion of hidden and lost rivers and urban watercourses has been a particular fascination (previously) and we were especially pleased to come across some speculative spelunking both around London—courtesy of Things Magazine—and Toronto, via Maps Mania. While the London show is more testimony of lives reconstructed through artefact and mudlarking and the Toronto one is an interactive exploration, even connecting to tours that trace the routes of these former tributaries, both are pretty engaging and in both places, the secret, subterranean rivers and creeks have been championed to preserve their memory.
Preciously, we learn from amicus curiรฆ, Lowering the Bar, that the under-construction Ark Encounter Christian theme park in Kentucky are suing their insurance underwriters for failing to honour claims of flood damage.
The faithful recreation of Ark of Noah (with technical details as specified in the Book of Genesis, except gopher wood due to it being a hapax legomenon and no one really knows what tree it is sourced from, if it in fact survived the deluge) was not damaged itself but rather a service road was affected by heavy rainfall and an ensuing landslide that caused work stoppage and outlays of around a million dollars to shore up the slope and to restore the access path, and it remains unclear whether the park’s policy might have an “acts of God” exclusion. Much more to explore at the link above.
