Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • relaxing on the water

    relaxing on the water, originally uploaded by dunrie.

    My husband is the one in the middle. He is so much better at relaxing than I am. I suppose this is why we are good for each other…

    flotilla, originally uploaded by dunrie.

  • Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

    The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too LateI just finished The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It’s Too Late, which details how we are running off of “startup capital” in a resource-draining, non-integrated way. The beginning echoed many environmental books – a depressing litany of all of the ways we are living unsustainably. When I read that sort of thing I get to feeling hopeless, like there’s little I can do that will affect, say, the fact that we may drive chimps, bonobos, and gorillas extinct in the next 100 years (a factoid in a recent New Yorker article), will run out of oil, are destroying forests, losing soil to the oceans, and are causing certain fish populations to collapse. It makes me want to hide in a cave and renounce everything. It makes me want to give up. It makes me feel like the problem is so much larger than my own actions that there is no hope.

    It is refreshing that Thom Hartmann’s calls-to-action for recovery are small and affirming and possible instead of grand:

    • meditate,
    • live intentionally according to your own values, this has immense power and affects others, a positive ripple effect, a dampening of other influences,
    • notice the stories we create and accept about the way the world works and work to get outside them,
    • turn off the tv and talk to your neighbors, your spouse, your family, listen to the wind and see other living things as part of the larger system,
    • involve yourself in your local community.

    He doesn’t list them like this. But I think the main theme of his book is: get connected with yourself (meditate), with others, and with the larger system we all inhabit.

    For my part I’m passing this book onto a few like-minded friends and continuing with some things I’m already doing (meditation, subscribing to a local CSA), and I’ll be looking for other little changes to make to align myself with these ideas and work for positive change.

  • My Tribe

    Group photo, originally uploaded by dunrie.

    My tribe includes:

    1 husband
    1 stepmother
    4 cousins
    4 cousins-once-removed (including 2 infants and 2 kids)
    1 aunt
    1 uncle
    1 sister
    1 brother-in-law
    1 nephew
    1 toddler niece
    & 5 dogs

    This posse of 11 adults, 3 kids, 1 toddler, 2 infants, and 5 canines shared one roof and one bathroom at the family cabin last night. The infants and toddler came to a gentlewomen’s agreement to make it a quiet night’s sleep for all.

    All the noise, hub-bub, drama, and dish washing made me realize that our parents and our aunt and uncle are saints for having nurtured and endured our cohort of 4 in summers past. The cycle begins anew with the newest crop of Greiling kids.

  • KARB – > CNR4 = dream come true


    On Friday, husband and I flew from Ann Arbor municipal airport (KARB) to Tobermory (CNR4) at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. We stopped to clear customs at Kincardine. Friday was wonderfully smooth–so smooth that I fell asleep in midair while Dave piloted the plane. (I think this new job thing must be more exhausting than I’d expected–I slept away much of the weekend, slept in the car, slept in the hammock, slept in the plane…).

    Visibility was good, and we circled over Gillies Lake twice. Above is a shot from the first pass over it, and our family cabin is in the little triangular nub at the top left corner of the Lake. Beyond the trees, the waters of Georgian Bay and the horizon blend together. These photos really show how Gillies Lake is perched on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment.

    Anyway, I wanted to note that ever since I was small it has been my dream to fly to the cabin. Currently I’m riding on my husband’s license. I will get certified too, though I am taking things one at a time: settle in new job, then start an intense new hobby.

    Someday we’ll have a float plane and land on the lake. Til then, landing in spectacular Tobermory will do.

  • Black-eyed Susans invading my lawn

    Black-eyed Susans invading my lawn, originally uploaded by dunrie.

    We’ve got black-eyed Susans flowering in our back lawn, and they’ve crossed the fence and are working their way towards our neighbors’ garage. My garden is colonizing our and our neighbors’ lawn. I have been meaning to do this myself (dig up turf, replace with flowerbeds)–how interesting to see that the plants have decided to take on the task themselves.

    A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. These are garden, not weeds!

  • Things I learned leaving

    At a small place, one cool thing is that individual positions can be tailored to the innate talents of the staff. A downside is that jobs that are built around an individual are not readily handed off to others. People have different skills, this is a good thing. It does interfere with interchangability, though.

    It was interesting wrapping up my job for delivery to someone else. As I left my previous job, I parcelled the work I had been doing into a few pieces.

    • Items handed off to new PM: project management, resource coordination, planning for new projects, client communications
    • Items handed off to others in organization: communications with vendors on invoicing, receptionist, business analyst/information architect.
    • Items put on hold for “persons unknown” – to be hired in or subcontracted out as needed: copywriting, seo

    I had coped with a small staff by taking on several responsibilities myself. This strategy got things done in the short term (faster to do it myself than explain it sometimes, I was able to fill in gaps that I recognized).

    Over the long run, however, I think that playing several roles it helped us stay smaller longer, that I actually delayed the piece I needed (bigger team). I also think that I interfered with myself playing any single role as well as I would have liked, multitasking is a myth.

    I have every confidence that my replacement will do great things there. She’s a professional project manager, and a stronger one than I am. I think that as my old employer grows, and it is growing fast at the moment, more specialization and delegation will have to occur. And I know she will put that in place.

    I don’t know if that means that I am suited to a more “entrepreneurial” than a “mature” phase company. I’m a generalist, a bridge person between specialists. I’m also wondering whether my versatility helps or hinders. Probably both.