I recently received a question from someone who read my Transitions Abroad article on Immersion in Russia. The reader wanted to know how to learn the basics of Russian without access to a class.

Before I transferred to Colorado College and started taking Russian, I tried a “teach yourself Russian” book (I no longer have it and can’t remember which one it was). The advantage of this type of book over a regular textbook is that they’re intended to be used without the benefit of a teacher. However, they tend to focus exclusively on very basic conversation–perhaps not a bad thing if you just want some bare-bones of grammar, vocabulary, and the Cyrillic alphabet before you dive into immersion.

If you go the route of a book, it’s definitely helpful to get one with audio CDs. A huge part of picking up the basics is learning to hear and recognize the sounds of the language. Since I did study Russian formally in college, I don’t have any particular recommendations for homestudy books/CDs. I suggest reading reviews online and trying your local library’s selection to see what fits best with your learning style before you buy.

There are a few other possibilities besides college classes, depending on where you live. Local recreation and community centers often offer casual language classes for adults. Russian is a less common offering than some other languages, but it’s worth looking. Even if your local college doesn’t offer Russian classes, there might be a student group that meets to practice conversation, or you might be able to start one in your college or community.

All of this applies to learning most other languages, although finding or starting a local conversation group will be more difficult (or impossible) if you’re planning on studying a less commonly-taught language.

My priorities are usability, accessibility, and style. I design websites to be user-friendly, screenreader-accessible, and attractive, so you can reach the widest possible audience or client base. I offer web design services for organizations seeking small, easy-to-maintain websites, and can also help you set up a blog or website using WordPress, a highly customizable, flexible, free blogging platform equally suited to powering a blog or a small-to-medium-sized website.

You can view full-size images of past websites I’ve designed, as well as links to those which are still live (many were temporary museum exhibit pages). I will be adding some more projects in the near future.

Perennial agriculture has the potential to revolutionize farming, creating low-maintenance crops that don’t require frequent replanting and use of heavy machinery or cause nutrient depletion in the soil. Read more about Jerry Glover and the Land Institute in Nature or find out firsthand about Land Institute research in “Future Farming: A Return to Roots?” by Jerry Glover, Cindy Cox, and John P. Reganold in Scientific American.

Monterey Bay Aquarium’s popular exhibit Jellies: Living Art will be closing September 14, 2008. This exhibit contains both spectacular living specimens of a variety of jellies (“jellyfish”) from around the world rarely seen in aquariums and a variety of art that echoes the shapes, colors, and movements of the jellies, ranging from Blaschka glass models of jellies and engravings by Ernst Haeckel (left) to Dale Chihuly’s spectacular glass art.

Jellies: Living Art was unusually visitor-driven in its design. The aquarium interviewed over 300 visitors about their experience with the permanent jelly exhibit, and found that 97% wanted an aesthetic experience–and 35% cared only about the aesthetic experience, not the content. Many visitors enjoy simply being with the jellies. [1]

Jellies: Living Art celebrates the beauty of living jellies and how they and their environment have inspired artistic works. While conservation messages are present, the exhibit focuses primarily on aesthetics, not science. The exhibit proved overwhelmingly popular–it opened in 2000, and has been extended several times due to public demand.

Although it’s hard for art to compete with jellies in my mind (my favorites are the Mediterranean jellies, left), I was particularly struck by the Blaschka glass models (c. 1886), which were created much earlier than most of the Blaschka models I have seen elsewhere, such as the glass flowers at Harvard. While delicate and beautiful, they are much less strikingly realistic and delicate than the Blaschkas’ later works.

Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, a Bohemian-born father-son team of glassworkers based in Germany, created hundreds of educational glass models of sea life and terrestrial plants for universities and institutes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These models, unlike preserved and pressed specimens, retained color and shape (particularly important for jellies), making them perfect for teaching science. The Blaschkas used wire armatures, glue, and paint as well as glass to create their realistic sculptures. No one since has been able to replicate their techniques.

One intriguing aspect of the Blaschka’s marine models, particularly the later ones, is their “dry” appearance. However, as artist William Warmus notes, “Wetness is given to us by visual cues–drops of water, irregularities of sheen–that can’t exist beneath the waves.” Warmus’s fascinating essay on the Blaschka marine invertebrates contains photographs of some of their more sophisticated jelly models, almost indistinguishable from real jellies. [2]

According to docents, the jellies from Jellies: Living Art will be moved to permanent exhibits or to other aquariums. The permanent jelly exhibit on the second floor will remain open (photo at left).

Where: Monterey Bay Aquarium, 886 Cannery Row, Monterey, CA 93940 – 1085, USA
When: Until September 14, 2008
More Information: www.montereybayaquarium.org

[1] ZooLex, a resource for animal exhibit design, discusses the method behind the exhibit design in more detail.

[2] The Design Museum’s touring exhibit of Blaschka marine models also contains some spectacular jellies.

Photos © 2008 Melissa Barton

I’ve seen three major approaches to projects like this:

1. Focus on your favorite type of photography and try to improve it.
2. Focus on a less comfortable type of photography and try to improve it.
3. Attempt to encapsulate your day in a photo.

I started out well within my comfort zone–macros of flowers–because flowers hold still, it’s spring (hooray!), and I’m trying to push the limits of my digital point-and-shoot (they’re pushed). By the end of the month, I had moved more towards the third approach.

I improved some aspects of my photography, and managed to create a fairly interesting (to me, anyway) account of my month: spring in Colorado, Florissant, Steamboat Springs, and my trip to Houston last week. There aren’t a lot of people in my photographs because I don’t like posting photos of people online without asking first. The main thing I am taking away from this experience is that I’ve pushed my point-and-shoot as far as it can reasonably go, and I seriously need to start looking at DSLRs if I want to take the photos I imagine.

You can see most of my photos in my Project30 Flickr Photoset.

April 9: A tree on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus, from a bus stop.

April 10: It snowed again! Probably not the exact same leaflet from the 6th, but the same bush.

A gratuitous cat photo from the 10th below the cut. This one is always in motion and difficult to photograph (the other is low-contrast black and camera-shy and also difficult to photograph).

Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing, by Elise Hancock
ISBN 0801873304
This slim little book doesn’t talk about marketing or selling your writing at all; it talks about crafting a good science story (although the principles are broadly applicable), and does so in a clear, elegant way that makes it a genuinely enjoyable book to read. I reread Ideas into Words periodically to remind myself that science stories are everywhere, and not always obviously science.

A Field Guide for Science Writers, eds. by Deborah Blum, Mary Knudson (1st and 2nd ed.), and Robin Marantz Henig (2nd ed.)
ISBN 0195124944 (1st ed.), 0195174992 (2nd ed.)
This is cheating, because the two editions are actually completely different books, and both are full of excellent essays about writing techniques, finding stories, covering difficult science and environmental topics, marketing, and working on the PR side. Both are invaluable resources for the new science writer. The first edition is out of print, so snap it up if you find a used copy.

Word Painting, by Rebecca McClanahan
ISBN 1582970254
This is the best general book on writing craft that I’ve read. It’s about writing vivid and meaningful description, and is equally useful for the writer of creative nonfiction, fiction, or poetry. A truly inspiring book.

The Renegade Writer, by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell
ISBN 1933338008
It’s kind of a cliched book for my top 5, but this is really a very useful introduction to the business of writing and marketing yourself. Not all of the ideas are “renegade,” but the ones I’ve tried so far have generally been helpful, and it’s a nicely organized quick reference book. I also read the Renegade Writer Blog.

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments, by Jenna Glatzer
ISBN 097220265X
I find this book to be a nice compliment to The Renegade Writer, and I appreciate Glatzer’s specific examples of how she broke into trades and worked her way up to major consumer magazines.

Not on the list, thanks to the internet: Writer’s Market
While I liked the essays and articles on writing and selling in the front, I like not having to buy a new copy every couple years and saving the shelf space more. It’s not a comprehensive index of all publications that use freelancers, but it’s a very good starting place.

In contrast to yesterday’s sunny, warm spring weather (I wasn’t able to take any pictures before the snow melted):

Withered winter berries and new spring leaves. I didn’t get the focus quite right on this one:

As a member of the marketing committee, I drafted and edited the brochure text. The amazing graphic design was done by Kristin Weber of Sugar Design, using photographs from the museum. It’s a beautiful design, which aptly conveys what many of us think natural history museums are about: nature, people, art, and the intersections between them.