Bio Boot Camp Days 5 to 7

Just in case you thought that I worked the entire time, I thought that I would lead with our Friday night dining out photo. It's super sweet, the lab staff always goes out to dinner on Friday, and they invited all of us to come.

It's a super cute american style restaurant in Northampton Massachusetts. Also, if you didn't know it's named after a Dick Van Dyke movie from 1967. I had a lovely, spicy caesar salad with salmon. What was even better was the conversation. Going around the table we have that Raj who is a lecturer at Wichita State University ( Just in case you're wondering, I did make lots of jokes about how boring and flat his state is...), Patrick who teaches at a really cool tech school called Minuteman High School in Lexington Massachusetts, Laurie who works for our conference sponsor New England biological, Olga, my amazing lab partner who I'm praying, is going to work for Johnson and Johnson in Mike's and my backyard!!!, Rick from Miami and of course me. I love how everyone's diverse backgrounds come together in one place. Raj and I often sit together because we've both traveled a lot and of course I adore India.

I promised myself I was not going to drown all of you in science in this particular blog. This new find was just so awesome, I had to share it. In biology, we use dialysis tubing to show how objects move across a cell membrane. It's really tough for the students to open or separate the membrane and now I'm wondering if they have to because I found these!! Basically, you put a liquid on top of the filter and up if the molecules in the liquid are small enough they will pass through the filter/membrane and into the liquid below, if they're not, they stay trapped in the liquid above. I'll have to experiment and see how quickly it happens, but it might be a really amazing way to let them do the experiment with the fake cell membrane rather than just watch me, do it. If you're interested in the actual experiment that I'm thinking of doing it with, you can ask, because I'll talk your ear off :)

Yet you know me, I have to throw in just one more thing. Here are my phone first e coli colonies!! I wanted to show you these because we are going to genetically modify them and they are going to eventually express a pink color. Stay tuned for that later in the week.

Now, why don't we put down the lab code and the petri dishes. Clean up the benchBecause school's out at three o'clock on Saturday. TThis gave me a wonderful start to my weekend, which, of course, I kicked off in the art museum.

George Rickey, 1972 Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Rhombus

I wanted to share this.Wonderful sculpture with you. I see it every day on my way to class.And I can't help but stop and watch it when the wind is blowing. I find it immensely, peaceful and have actually curled up under a tree to watch when the light is just right. Please feel free to tell me what you think about this and all of the artwork that I'm about to show.

SCMA

The Smith College Museum of Art was first established in 1870. Housed in the Brown Center, the Art Department of Smith College offers art history degrees, first initiated by President Laurenus Clark Seelye in the 1870s, has evolved to become one of the most respected programs in American undergraduate education. It has an extensive collection, which includes paintings, sculptures, works on paper, antiquities, decorative arts from diverse cultures around the world. The museum has four floors of galleries that house the permanent collection, as well as the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. In addition, the museum also features two bathrooms designed by artists Ellen Driscoll and Sandy Skoglund to represent functional art. Don't worry.I have amazing photos of these!

This one is Sandy Skoglund, 1968....

And this one is Ellen Driscoll also'68.

I really can spend all day in an art museum. There's something about the quiet spaces, and the awakening of the senses that keeps me coming back. There's also the fact that there is so much room for me to grow in my understanding of art. At the end of class on Saturday, I told Olga that I was going to the museum. She made a joke that "There was quite a lot of Impressionism, and I should just skip it." I had told her how I felt about impressionism, which is generally not my favorite art style. You know how the saying, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans....well, and clearly it works with Olga too. On the 4th floor I ran into these two paintings.

Childe Hassam 1899, White Island Light Isle of Sholes at Sundown

Camille Pissarro 1890, Old Chelsea Bridge, London

I was captivated. Both impressionist artists but such different techniques. To top it off there is a skylight above them and the clouds kept changing the amount of sun that fell on the paintings. It was like seeing the places on different days or in different seasons. I as I get older I see my present and past in softer light. Perhaps impressionism isn't exactly for the young, perhaps you have to have perspective to be able to see the magic.

One of the things that I like the most about this art gallery is that they buy paintings and then pair them with the sketches that the artist did before working on the final piece. This is an excellent example where you can see how things changed from an early sketch, through amiddle sketche with color, and all the way to a pre-painting. I don't see this nearly as often as I would like to in major museums. It takes a very special curator to take a chance on something like this.

The weekend was quite full, and I'm going to stop talking about it for now. I did go back to the art museum again, and the botanical gardens, but they'll have to get dovetailed in with monday's post. Hope you all had an awesome weekend and I'll see you when i'm back in PA.