30 November 2003
Dear Friends and Family,
Yesterday, the first snowfall of the winter reminded me that yet another year has passed and it was time to start writing the annual Christmas letter. Each fall there is a flurry of activity after the end of the field season to try to get everything set before winter arrives. Foremost among these activities is the raking, mulching, and composting of innumerable leaves before they are plastered to the ground by the first hard snow, or else spring will see a miserable cleanup job and a yard ravaged by snow mold. This year our next-door neighbor Jordan, who is in high school, rounded up most of the early- and mid-season leaves while we were traveling in Arizona, and cut our grass very short so that a tremendous windstorm near the end of November took away the late-season leaves and left the yard in great shape, ready to be snowed upon. We even managed to give the garage its annual cleaning before the weather turned freezing, so we were able to wash it out with a hose, without turning the driveway into a sheet of ice.
With the outdoor chores done, another early winter activity is
planning trips for the coming year. For the last few weeks I have been
finalizing details for a 2-week Christmas 2003 trip to south
There's not much news to report here. Eileen continues to
volunteer at the Nature Conservancy, garden, read voraciously, and feed most of
the gray squirrel population of northeastern North America (with whom she is on
a first-name basis). She is looking forward to starting a video course from the
Teaching Company on anthropology this winter, once she finishes up a course on
Beethoven’s symphonies. I’ve started a tape course on concert masterworks,
chosen because it discusses Dvorak’s “From the New World” symphony, a personal
favorite. A few of the books Eileen read this year and recommends highly are:
the civil war works “Gods and Generals” and “The Last Full Measure”, by Jeff
Shaara; and “Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life,” by Carlo D’Este. I particularly
enjoyed “Barren Lands,” by Kevin Krajick, an extraordinary account of the
search for the first commercially exploitable diamonds on this continent; and
“Throwim Way Leg” by Tim Flannery, an Australian mammalogist describing his
fascinating field work in
I am still working in the area of medical image quality, and will be leading a large, new project in that field next year, which should be very challenging. The ISO standard I am working on is progressing well and probably will be published late in 2004, and I got a couple of patents this year on image quality measurement. My Handbook of Image Quality: Characterization and Prediction is doing reasonably well; it's going into a second printing. My colleagues and I have now taught three one-day courses based on the book at various conferences, and have a fourth scheduled for January. I got my first royalty check in June, which Eileen said I should use to do something special, instead of just putting it into checking and letting it slowly dwindle away.
So we bought a new canoe, the Wenonah Spirit II, made of
ultralight kevlar (helpful if you get involved in a shootout while paddling).
It weighs only 42 lbs., about 20 lbs. less than our previous one, and so is
much easier to portage and to get on and off the roof of the camper, which
requires use of a ladder. It is a little longer (17 versus 15 feet) and bit
faster than our previous canoe, which I sold to a friend at work. We also
upgraded to carbon-fiber racing paddles that weigh about half what a wooden
paddle does, which makes a noticeable difference when you paddle over 10,000
strokes in a day, as we often do. After getting the canoe in early July, we
took every available opportunity to get out paddling, and by the end of the
year had covered a little over 300 miles in 30 days or partial days on the
water. Our most intense canoeing was on our annual
We did a 4-day canoe-camping trip on Low's Lake in the Adirondacks with our friend Allan Sowinski, which featured many bald eagles and a couple of Baird's sandpipers foraging on floating vegetation in the lake, an unlikely location for these scarce migrants. Other areas we canoed included the St. Regis Ponds and Raquette River in the Adirondacks; several of the Finger Lakes; and most of the lakes in Harriman State Park, in the Hudson River Highlands west of New York City. At this latter location, we joined a New York Flora Association (NYFA) field trip where we saw many exciting plants, several of which are very rare in the state. The highlight of the trip, however, were long and spectacular views of a six-foot, gravid, coiled, timber rattlesnake! While in the area, we had the chance to visit with my brother, Chuck, and it was marvelous to see him again.
Another NYFA trip we attended was in the northeast corner of the
state, visiting sandstone pavement barrens, a globally rare habitat. The most
exciting find, by yours truly, was a new orchid that we had long sought, the
white adder's-mouth. On this long weekend we made a big loop, visiting friends
and family. One day we hiked with Gary Lee, who is retired from the Forest
Service; he took us into a beautiful bog that we had snowshoed over once many
years ago. Then we visited Marie Kuhnen, whom I met while I was in high school
and she was leading a field trip to Chincoteague for one of her ornithology
classes. It was lovely to see her again, and we together enjoyed a beautiful
canoe trip between Jones and Osgood Ponds, near Paul Smiths. Finally, we
visited my dad in
January started with an exciting first-winter Ross’ gull in
Rochester, only the second we have ever seen and the first in this plumage,
which is very rarely seen on this continent (the species breeds primarily in
Siberia). In February, I had a medical imaging conference in
In March we flew to
Our big trip of the year was a 52-day excursion to southern
Our 10,500 mile route took us through Ash Meadows (Nevada), Death
Valley, the eastern Mojave Desert, Joshua Tree National Park, the Salton Sea,
Anza-Borrego State Park, the Santa Rosa Plateau, the San Jacinto, San
Bernardino, and San Gabriel Mts., Santa Cruz I., the transverse ranges, the
Carrizo Plain, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, Mono Lake, Devil’s
Postpile, the White Mts., Onion Valley, and the Charleston Mts. (Nevada). The
weather was warm, the night-time lows of 45° and daytime highs to 113°. We
had no rain west of
I got two life birds, Gunnison Sage Grouse and Island Scrub-Jay,
both species that were officially “split” (declared separate from existing
species) after we moved east. These were my last straightforward (“Code 1”)
bird species in
Our mammal list was 42 species, our best total ever, although 5
species of mice were seen only by virtue of setting out live traps at night
when camping in remote areas. I saw a remarkable 6 life species: Palmer and long-eared chipmunks, Nelson’s
antelope squirrel, canyon mouse, yellow-faced pocket gopher, and desert pocket
mouse. In addition, Eileen got desert woodrat, Belding’s and round-tailed
ground squirrels, brush and pinyon mice, and kit fox. Eileen’s next new mammal
will be # 150 for her, a major milestone. Other exciting mammals included blue
whale, badger, and alpine chipmunk. We identified about 330 species of plants,
a good list, featuring many desert wildflowers and cacti. We searched for and
found 3 target conifers: one-seed juniper, foxtail pine, and Piute cypress. The
first two were new for Eileen, the last for both of us, so now we have both
seen 96 of the 98 native conifers in North America (the last two, Baker cypress
and Washoe pine, occur in northeastern California). Piute cypress grow only in
a few groves on the steep slopes overlooking
The trip was a nostalgic one for us, as we were able to visit
many of our favorite locations while we lived in southern
The new camper got quite a workout, with very hot and dusty conditions and rough four-wheel driving. We made a number of modifications and enhancements during and after the trip, and now are in good shape to handle such extreme conditions. By the end of the trip, having had the camper just under one year, we had spent a total of over 100 nights in it, and the number will be about 150 nights by the end of this calendar year.
In mid-October we took a 9-day trip to the Great Smokies. We
stayed overnight in
Just after we returned
Eileen’s parents came to visit for a week. It was nice to see them again, make the rounds of our favorite local
restaurants, and play a few games of anagrams. Shortly after they left, we flew
to
With luck we’ll be swimming with manatees on
Happy holidays!
Brian and Eileen