Local Ecologist

Trees being counted here! #treescount #treescount2015 #nycparks A photo posted by Local Ecologist (@localecologist) on Jun 20, 2015 at 7:48am PDT One of the best things I did last year was to volunteer as a TreesCount2015! tree counter. I attended a presentation by Jaclyn Shanley hosted by Trees New York. Then I recruited a co-trainer from my neighborhood's mothers' list serve and founded Washington Square Tree Counters. Annie and I attended co-trainer training events then hosted mapping events of our own. Over the course of 4 events with 53 attendees as well as independent mappers, Washington Square Tree Counters mapped 99.7% blocks in our census area for a total of 1, 139 trees! Excited about mapping street trees this evening! #treescount #treescount2015 @nycparks A photo posted by Local Ecologist (@localecologist) on Jun 22, 2015 at 11:57am PDT TreesCount2015! is ongoing. Staff and independent mappers are mapping this winter and voluntreers will resume mapping when tr

We have a long bucket list of parks, memorials, monuments, and museums to visit while we live in the DC area. Last weekend we spent the morning at two National Park Service sites in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington: the Marine Corps War Memorial (flag raising at Iwo Jima) and the Netherlands Carillon. Learn about the Marine Corps War Memorial  on the NPS website. What I found particularly impressive about the statues were the details of faces, clothes, and equipment. From the NPS website: Sculptor Felix W. de Weldon, then on duty with the US Navy, was so moved by the image that he constructed first a scale model and then a life-size model of it. Gagnon, Hayes, and Bradley, the three survivors of the flag raising (the others were killed on Iwo Jima), posed for the sculptor as he modeled their faces in clay. All available pictures and physical statistics of the three who had given their lives were collected and then used in the modeling of their faces. Across the road from the

With family in town last week we ventured back to Theodore Roosevelt Island. We visited for the first time last fall and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Our visitors liked the island, too; this could be our go-to spot to show out of town guests. Technically the park is in DC but we claim it since the only way to get to the park is from Virginia. Woods and water are a magical combination! We parked. We slowly crossed the bridge. There's a lot to see. Paddle boarders, kayakers, and ducks. Sometimes other young children and dogs. Once on the island we headed towards to the memorial which sits on top of a small rise on the northern tip of the island. It's a dramatic memorial officially named the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial . A 17-foot bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the U.S., is flanked by four 21-foot tall granite tablets, two on either side, describing values he held dear. The memorial plaza also contains two pools each with a

The new exhibit, Wonder, at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC is awe-some. Using everyday objects, nine artists created nine "immersive" artworks to make visitors literally wonder. I recognized the name of three of the artists -- Patrick, Dougherty, Leo Villarreal, and Maya Lin. I first saw Patrick Dougherty's stick sculpture at the Parque del Retiro in Madrid. Leo Villarreal designed The Bay Lights in San Francisco and Hive in the Bleecker Street NYC subway station. Maya Lin is Maya Lin. The other six artists are Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker, Gabriel Dawe, Tara Donovan, Janet Echelman, and John Grade. The artworks are presented in the order in which I saw them. Shindig Patrick Dougherty 2015 Plexus A1 Gabriel Dawe 2015 Untitled Tara Donovan 2014 Volume (Renwick) Leo Villareal 2015 1.8 Janet Echelman 2015 I have not done this for the previous entries but wanted to highlight the significance of the title of this wo