Buck Moth and Paper Updates

My papers are coming along swimmingly, and I'm on track to be all done with my first year of grad school next Thursday.
Also, this article, dated April 19, predicts the onslaught of buck moth caterpillars will begin in three weeks--so, from today, less than two weeks.

April Showers

It rained a whole lot yesterday, and Tulane's drainage system, if there is one, wasn't quite able to handle it. When I was preparing to move here, a friend at Tulane sent me a picture of a student walking in rain boots through eight inches of water, and I thought, "Surely, that is a highly irregular event." Nope. I just took my shoes off (and then slipped on my new flip-flops, which conveniently had arrived that very day!).

Enjoy these pictures I took, after I was already very wet. At least it was warm thunderstorm, but the downside was that, were I to take shelter in any building anywhere after already having been exposed to the rain, I would have caught a cold, because the super air conditioning has been switched on and all campus buildings are kept at a comfortable 60 degrees or so.
[As always, click for higher resolution.]


The road toward the dorms.


The Newcomb quad.


By the library.

The Crescent Commute

I've noticed an interesting thing while biking to my night classes recently--the odd shape of this city is to my advantage on my commute. I ride west, into the sunset, toward campus, and when I set out down my block, the sun lies immediately before me. But after only three blocks, it has taken refuge behind the huge trees that line my route. After another few blocks, it is behind the houses to my left.

So I don't wear sunglasses. But I've been considering them for an entirely different reason: I keep getting bugs in my eye (always my left one). On the warm and still days, they just hang at eye-level, I guess.

But I'm told that those aren't even the most dangerous bugs. Soon, the stinging buck-moth caterpillars will emerge to fall on us from the trees and cover everything else with danger. Their sting is supposed to numb you and hurt you. I hope I continue to have only hearsay information about the physiology of their effects, but my commute takes me regularly through Audubon Park, where live-oaks abound, those trees being the reason that these caterpillars abound in New Orleans. (Say, maybe they're the ones who take down the Mardi Gras beads left hanging?)

Follow-up note: I've solved the problem of what season it is in New Orleans: It's paper-writing season. After that, I guess it will be summer. (Paper-writing season would feel less unnatural if it weren't 78 degrees and sunny every day.)

Treme

Just a quick note: For those of you with HBO, the pilot just aired of a new series about New Orleans after Katrina. I haven't seen it, since I don't have HBO, but the reviews are generally positive.
Here's the trailer (caution: language).

I might rent David Simon's other very famous series The Wire in lieu of watching Treme.

ps. In case you didn't know this, it is pronounced "Tremay."

Spring, Fall, and Summer

I'm not sure what season it is in New Orleans.

All of the flowers bloomed while I was away on Spring Break--so did spring break while I was away?

The temperature, in any other place that I've lived, would suggest summer, since the sun at its peak carries us well into the 80s. But I know better than to call that NOLA's summer heat, which is twenty or thirty degrees above that in the hot shade of August.

Yet there are also many leaves on the ground. I haven't kept careful track of this, but there might always be leaves on the ground, as though the trees were indoor pets who always shed and renew their coats with no regard for the season. To get along in my own disorientation, I am doing my best to do the same.

[Click for higher resolution, esp. to see what I did with some MG beads.]