Sunday, April 2, 2023

Diary of Thomas Stratford, coal miner, great grandfather

Diary of Thomas Morgan Stratford

Born 13 January 1884 in Bridgend, Glamorganshire, Wales, Somerset, England
Died 6 September 1948 in Avoca, Luzerne, Pennsylvania, USA

Wife was Elizabeth Wilce, who was born August 6, 1888 in Simpson, Pennsylvania and died January 22, 1980 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. 

Thomas Morgan and Elizabeth are buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Carbondale, Pennsylvania. The headstones are located around the southern 1/3 mark. I was there when my great grandmother was buried though all I remember it that it was a cold and cloudy day.  

I was given this diary by my uncle Tom Stratford, who passed away a few ago. Rather that having the diary sit somewhere in  drawer I thought I was share it as I read through it. I will also add pictures as they are discovered. Dates are a bit of an issue as there are many entries that only have the month and day and some with no date. 

I read through the diary and it is not a daily record. Rather, my great grandfather used to the diary over several years to record different events. I will use this space to put events in chronological order so this is a working document and I will annotate accordingly. 

January 1, [1924]






Entries in chronological order

June 14, 1924 
"Rec'd check for 30.00 interest on Gen. Mot." 

August 21, 1924 
"Born to Mr. and Mrs. Kirt Birch (sp?) a baby girl at Emergency Hospital Carbondale" 

September 28, 1924 
"Mrs Brain had baby christened at Carbondale. Lizzie and I stood for her. 

December 15, 1924 
"Rec'd check for $31.25 interest on Gen Mot

September 1, 1925 
"Started coal strike"

October 1, 1924 
"Loaned H.H. Kudleck twenty dollars $20.00 on this date.  
Feb. Rec'd check for $20.00 from H.H. Kudleck

(Updated 3 April 2023)



 

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Wilkes University Arthropod Collection 2022 Summary

 When I arrived at Wilkes University in 2007, we had a collection of about 250 insects, arranged in orders in drawers. Unfortunately, none of the specimens had labels so many were tossed. Around 2011, we inherited hundreds of insects from Mike, a friend of the university that took care of the university and also a school teacher. These insects were also without any collection information and many were thrown out. Heart breaking but what is the value of a specimen without any data? 

In the meantime, we were collecting arthropods as part of study of grassland restoration (see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rec.12202), then as a study of the effects of grassland management on diversity in fifteen grasslands (accepted in Ecosphere). Those samples were sorted to order. Many were photographed and data were entered into Biota. I'm still trying to find the images - my worry is that the file was created by someone that graduated and no longer accessible. Lesson learned. 

More recently, I became interested in the effects of prescribed burning on pollinators and food webs more largely. In the last two years, I must have collected, I'm estimating, about 10,000 insects and we have sorted about 4200 insects so far. There are another 20,000 insects that are still in jars, envelopes, etc. so be sorted. Yep, I have quite the work load ahead of me. I'm sending many samples off to be analyzed for the food web study and we are focusing on omnivores - because their trophic position can tell us about the productivity of a site. 

I wanted to run some summary statistics to both create a benchmark for tracking progress of the collection and quality control. Simply by producing tables, I can catch spelling mistakes and other typos. 

We had 529 collection events entered. That's a pitfall, sweep, or pollinator pan. We do have a few collection entries that are single bird captures and a blood and feather sample is part of the collection. Moving forward, a collection involving birds will be all birds captured at a site during one effort (mist-netting/box check). We also have a few plants - this is different from the plants in the herbarium. These are samples to be isotoped for the food web study. Whole plants will go into the herbarium but tissue samples go into our collection. Not sure if this is best practice but this is where I'm at. 

Here's the summary of our collection 

Entries 

4241 entries

Megan O. entered 970 lines 

Tyler S. entered 948 lines

Cally E. entered 586 lines 

Becca K. entered 398 lines

There were about 10 other people that entered data - all less than 300 lines. 

I entered 238 lines - wow, I have a lot to do to catch up (consider it takes 5 - 10 minutes per insect to enter). 

Taxa

 - 23 unknown phyla (this is an error - unless I really can't identify something to phylum)

 - 2 annelids (worms)

 - 4125 arthropods (no surprise there)

 - 68 chordates (feather/blood, hair, scales)

 - 16 flowering plant samples (should be many many more)

 - 6 mollusks (all snails)

 - 1 fern (a bracken fern, a common field fern) 

 Of the arthropods 

    - 185 spiders

    - 88 collembola (springtails)

    - 14 millipedes (this number seems really low but it's odd how few go into pitfalls compared to how many you see in the forest)

    - 4 snails 

    - 3828 insects 

    - 3 Malacostraca (rolly-polly) 

Of the insects

    - 2 cockroaches (much much lower than expected)

    - 428 Coleoptera (beetles)

    - 1201 Diptera (flies)

    - 574 Hemiptera (true bugs)

    - 1239 Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants - most of these are ants and tiny wasps)

    - 88 Lepidoptera (most were hand captures but also include a number of micromoths that are a few mm) 

    - 17 Odonata (dragonflies - all are hand captures)

    - 138 Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets, mostly older samples from sweepnets) 

    -  50 mistakes (wrong orders listed with Insecta as the class, space added in front of the name or after)

    - identified to species 320 (not awesome) 

Moving forward

    - add many more species identities 

    - fix all the errors

    - send hundreds of samples off to be isotoped (~ 850 samples have isotope data) 

    - sort and enter thousands of insects! 

I do need a bunch of https://www.forestry-suppliers.com/p/53598/52861/cornell-university-insect-cabinet-drawer.  And time.. lots of time. 

Micromothone of the micromoths

 rove beetle




 

         

 

 

Monday, December 26, 2022

Flash back and slow forward to 2023

I haven't posted in over a year. Remarkable. It recently dawned on me how little time I seem to have for anything. The College of Science and Engineering was dissolved while I was away in the Galapagos so my position as dean (and associate dean) ended. Despite not having extra responsibilities (because I was teaching full-time as well) I feel like I have less time. Haven't been to the gym at all (and I feel and look it), I haven't sat down to do stamp stuff, and I haven't read a book. 

I did 

  • get to the Galapagos and Ecuador in May with a number of students and that well very well. 
  • have pretty good research field seasons. In 2021, we focused on pollinator pans in burned, cut, and reference forests. In 2022, we focused on collecting specimens for an isotope study
  • have a paper get accepted into Ecosphere - this was originally rejected from Ecological Application
  • get promoted to full professor
So not a spectacular year but a good year. I'll try and post the best photos from the Ecuador trip at some point. So time to access who I am and my increasing limits (i.e., how long can I stay awake or stomp through the forest). So here's are my goals to 2023

I will
  • Finish off the three chapters for the coffee book 
  • Submit an old data paper and a new data paper. Old data = my dissertation research from GA. New data is the yellow pollinator pan data. Would be great to get a third paper out but I don't want to be greedy
  • Push to have a big STEM event at Wilkes in May 
  • Sort, sort, sort, and sort bugs. We're sitting on thousands of insects from dozens of samples. At worst, we will have samples for a food web study. At best... well... good question. Many jars are dried up. Not sure what the best scenario is. 
  • Apply for a sabbatical. Because, man, am I due. 
  • Start doing those things I miss doing - like this blog! 



Monday, May 31, 2021

Summer 2021 Plans

Here are my summer plans... this is like posting New Year's Resolutions 

  • Submit a manuscript on weevil biogeography (done - took 750 lines of code)
  • Submit an opening essay on a virtual volume on Neotropical ornithology (needs to be finished ASAP - read all the papers - a dozen or so - write a collective intro)
  • Submit a revised manuscript of the clay caterpillar paper - rejected from Urban Ecosystems 
  • Submit a manuscript to Ecological Applications on our grassland research (lots of authors - about 80% done) 
  • Analyze the prescribed burning bird stuff (will require the fanciest of statistics - distance, random effects (site), detection probabilities)
  • Submit a manuscript to Northeastern Naturalist on prescribed burning and the effects on pollinators - only yellow pans used so not a very complete paper but still - cool stuff)
  • Add State Game Land 300 to the survey list (has rattlesnakes and is burned)
  • Apply for all permits needed to catch birds 
  • Deploy red, blue, yellow, white pollinator pans in burned and unburned game lands (ideally 30-40 total samples in each at a bunch of game lands)
  • Get weevil DNA barcoding protocols finalized 
  • Get the Ecology course prepped for Fall 
  • Get a data analytics certificate proposal together 
  • Get a trip to Ecuador organized
  • Check out Fulbright\Smithsonian sabbatical support 
  • Apply for Full Professor
  • Keep my mind in one piece 

2021 Field Season Kick Off - week 1

 Kicked off the 2021 field season with a solo trip to State Game Land 91. This unit was cut at least one year ago. My understanding is that this is a shelterwood cut where the canopy is largely removed with just a few standing trees remaining. The unit can be found off Hwy 115 between Wilkes-Barre and Bear Creek. If you want to see Chestnut-sided Warblers or Prairie Warblers this is your spot! This area might had Golden-winged Warblers but I did not detect one (I didn't do any playback for them either). 




This site this interesting because the groundcover strikes me as the understory of a forested site, with ferns (cinnamon and interrupted shown here) and not cover such as grasses, bracken fern, and goldenrods.  




After SGL 91, I took off to the Wilkes Ecology Preserve to do point counts and get trail camera images. Highlights included a young garter snake and a tree swallow that took up the box I put up a few weeks ago. 

young Garter Snake 
Wooly adelgid on hemlock 

Cinnamon Fern

Interrupted Fern 


Dwarf ginsing

Gaywings 
Red-backed Salamander 



Tupperware containing an Audiomoth unit that was never turned on :\ 
Tree Swallow eggs 

That's it though. One day. A good day. But one day in the field for the whole week. Rain and a hospitalized family member kept me in. Had graduation Sunday and today was Memorial Day. But here's a good week ahead. 

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Planning 2021

One of the great things about a break is the down time to reflect and plan. I really haven't done either. I did one article review and my brain is not engaging fully. Still, I need to plan. 

Teaching

This spring I'll be teaching BIO 347 Biostatistics and Experimental Design and BIO 298 Economics of Conservation with a colleague from the Poli Sci department. As of now we're scheduled to teach in person but COVID rates are higher than they were in spring. Although vaccines have been approved I don't see widespread vaccine availability until mid-Spring. Just a guess though. One student in Biostats has requested remote teaching so I'll be recording lectures - live or otherwise.  Live recordings ("synchronous") are easy because the camera is just recording me talking and I use my notes that are all ready to go. Asynchronous recordings require much more time - usually about 5 hours of work for 50 minutes of lecture time. 

I'd also like to teach Field Zoology this summer but I'm skeptical it could happen. I haven't thought about it that much. Probably should soon. Also, I'd like to change it to Wildlife Techniques.

The fall semester is still up in the air. I will possibly teach Ecology. If not, I think Archosaurs again.  

Research

This spring I need to focus on DNA barcoding insects. It's gone horribly slow and it just comes down to following directions.  We are also sorting insects from this summer's pollinator pan experiment. 

This summer I need to survey birds in burned and unburned sites on gamelands. If I can have students we'll work at the same sites and catch bugs, birds, and mammals to work out food webs. I'll need to renew a zillion permits. My least favorite thing to work on. 

I'd like to keep with the pollinator study. I started the pollinator project last August and it went exceedingly well. This coming summer I'll add a blue and white plate to the yellow plate I was putting out. Hopefully, by next summer I'll have better wasp ID skills and the barcoding will be down pat. 

Publishing

Clay caterpillar paper is in review. This has four or five students on it (all graduated). This was rejected the first time around and now resubmitted.

I have Ph.D. data I could try to publish on urbanization and birds. I have a ton of post doc data on bluebirds across an urban gradient. Those data are 15 years old. I have the pollinator data we're working on now - that won't be ready for weeks or a few months. There's the prescribed burning data - if anything that needs serious organizing.

Then there's the Wilson Ornithological Society. I'm the chair of the conservation committee and we've been struggling to come up with some initiatives. It looks like most of us want to publish. But what do we publish? Threats to birds? I think I'll put coffee growing forward as a topic and see if this gets some support. 





Thursday, December 10, 2020

Reflections on 2020

Academics

Stretching the brain a bit to go back to the spring. Here's what I remember. We took a number of students to Costa Rica in March for a class. Before the trip, I remember getting promed emails about something happening in China and thinking nothing of it. By the end of the trip people were masked at the airport and furiously wiping down their area. I didn't know if they were over-reacting or I was clueless and underreacting - or a bit of both. 

It wasn't long after we decided to close for two weeks, then to the end of the semester, then we closed until we reopened for the beginning of the fall semester. I was also teaching biostatistics and I recorded a few lectures

This last semester was BIO 225 Population and Evolutionary Biology - I did a third of the class and the all the labs. We had the fewest students - 29 and only two sections of lab. Normally we have three and we did have four sections one year. Table tops had clear plastic sheets separating students and we all wore masks. One student did not want to come in so I worked her into the labs as much as possible. She was recorder when we were taking measurements. Worked to some extent although I firmly believe that learning to handle equipment (e.g., micropipetter and thermocycler, etc) are all handy skills (plus you come to understand the work that goes into research on a very visceral level). The one student submitted her work through the LIVE system and it was just a matter of logging in and checking the work. 

I also had conservation biology. Although it could have been completely in person I recorded a number of lectures. I want to make this course completely online at some point (and add a lab). Something has to give (and now that I can't stay awake past 10 - more has to give) and I let the homeworks slide. Instead of 12 articles to read and answer questions I think they only had 4. That and 3 exams and journal club. I'd give myself a C+ for the course. 

Research 

This summer was about surveying burned and unburned sites in various state game lands. I covered new ground and hit a few sites I surveyed previously. This gives me more controlled data on how communities change through time (on short time scales). A few sites I wasn't able to get to but I hope to this coming summer. This makes the data messy but so it goes. I didn't employ the Wildlife Acoustics units. That was probably a mistake - they work great (but expensive). I also purchased a bunch of Audiomoth units. Much cheaper than Wildlife Acoustics but so far I'm not impressed. In fact, I have to get something recognizable off the units. I think they're really sensitive to moisture. The standard is to put them in a sandwich baggie and cross your fingers. I kid you not. 


I just ordered an acoustic vent, which is a membrane that transmits sound but not water. I have small tuperware containers that I'll drill a hole in and place the vent over the hole. I'll post a pic when completed. 

Towards the end of the summer I realized that I could easily study pollinators with pan traps. These are amazing. Simple, cheap, easy to deploy. A dream, yes?  The problem is the wealth of data you get. 

The picture above was typical of a pan after 24 hours.  That's right - 24 hours. I'll predict we get some 250 species of bee/fly/wasp.  We're also DNA barcoding the insects to see who they are. So far that's been going meh. 

Looks like the standard pan trap deployment is a combination of white, blue, yellow. I definitely want to do this next year so I need to up my pollinator ID skills. We're photographing everything as well but the iNaturalist crew has been slow to ID.  

I did submit a paper with five students as co-authors on Wednesday. Feels good. Years in the making and I had to figure out how to do raster extract in R. Which I did. Need to work on the next thing. 

The next thing...