Caitlin MacKenzie

One Art By Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

HOLD THE PHONE —

The lover that Elizabeth Bishop lost in 'One Art' CAME BACK TO HER after the poem was published.

I always assumed that the 'you' in the last stanza died, but she was just going to marry a man. WOW.

www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Our celebratory issue of Rhodora is available! NEBS members have access through their membership AND we've made most of this issue open-access. We've been publishing since 1899, so there's a lot to celebrate and we want everyone to join in! bioone.org/journals/rho...

Outlooks: Josephine Halvorson This is "Outlooks: Josephine Halvorson" by Storm King Art Center on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

To be fair to that incredible sculpture park, I was obsessed with this uncanny tree sculpture and I started teaching forest ecology methods with Josephine Halvorson's Measure (Tree) and that piece really seems to resonate with students.

vimeo.com/166578932

Reading the new alpine snowbank refugia paper at coffee shop while my kid attends a morning sewing camp reminds me of the years when her sister attended day camp at a sculpture park and I wrote manuscripts in a courtyard adjacent to a giant xylophone that kids whaled on with sticks.

a comic that comprises three rows and three columns of mock-scientific papers where only the titles are legible. The title of the whole comic is: "Types of scientific paper we read in advanced forest ecology & conservation (with lab)". The titles of the first row of papers are: "We made a computer model and called it a day"; "It was the past and ecology was easier back then"; "If you ignore the other variables, this finding is shocking!" The titles of the middle row of papers are: "I hope you like graphs…"; "I found these old documents so now I can do research for free*"; "FIA did the field work so we don’t have to" The titles of the bottom row of papers are: "Mars Attacks: Forests Invaded by Evil Alien (plants)"; "Oh, god, that’s right, there’s fauna out there"; "Some good news, actually"

a comic that comprises three rows and three columns of mock-scientific papers where only the titles are legible. The title of the whole comic is: "Types of scientific paper we read in advanced forest ecology & conservation (with lab)". The titles of the first row of papers are: "I think I’m obsessed with FIA data"; "I’ve been writing for the last ten years and I refuse to part with a single letter I wrote"; "I just found out about species interactions. Did you know about them?" The titles of the middle row of papers are: "Crap, we’re screwed."; "I've only talked with academics the last 10 years What do you mean you don't know ___"; "I’ve been studying acid rain for a whole lifetime and the government still won’t listen to me" The titles of the bottom row of papers are: "I hate that Canham cited me."; "You need 40 pages of history to begin to understand my brilliance"; "I enjoy making my students read my papers"

My students' take on the xkcd 'types of scientific papers'. A very cool, interesting moment of reflection on the semester together.

This exercise was inspired by Cindy Kohtala's blog about the meme www.cindykohtala.fi/2021/10/14/f...

We recently found Emerald Ash Borer on campus.

I'm putting together a Fall 2025 pop-up course/seminar series to celebrate ash trees, mourn the arrival of EAB, and explore the ash's human and non-human relationships in the northern forest.

Please share recommendations for speakers!

Spent the day in a DIY workshop with co-PIs from an NSF grant that was archived the day we were set to resubmit. Here’s the thing about scientists in a tiny state who work with small natural history collections: we get the science/teaching/conservation/outreach done. Our ROI is off the charts.

Graphic promoting "Botany on a Budget," a casual discussion on May 8, 2025, at 2 p.m. EST. The background shows green and blue tube racks filled with labeled microcentrifuge tubes. Text invites participants to join a conversation about strategies for conducting research on a limited budget. The image includes a QR code to register and logos for the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and Botany360. Sponsored by the BSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.

🌿 Stretching your research dollars? You’re not alone!

Join us for the #Botany360 free virtual event, Botany on a Budget — a casual discussion with BSA members who have experience making research happen with limited resources.

Thursday, May 8, 2025, 2–3 p.m. EST

Register here: tinyurl.com/bot360

This image shows a hand holding a leaf that is half green and half burning and brown. The AJB logo is seen in the top left corner. Text: AJB Special Issue Call for Papers: Plant Resilience and Conservation for a Changing Cliimate. Proposal deadline: May 30, 2025.

🌱 SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS 🌱

The #AJB announces a call for papers for a special issue, “Plant Resilience and Conservation for a Changing Climate,” led by guest editors J. Rentsch, E. Stacy, C. Mackenzie, J. Boyd & V. Negron-Ortiz.⁣
⁣
Deadline for proposals: May 30, 2025.

bit.ly/3GcyMUG

a scientist sits on the summit of a mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine. She is wearing a purple jacket and blue baseball cap, writing in an orange notebook. Behind her, the view stretches out across Mount Desert Island forests into the Gulf of Maine and distant islands.

#WithoutNSF my PhD research on the impacts of climate change on plant communities in Acadia National Park would not have been possible. Managers use our work to protect resources. Park educators & interpretive staff use our work to create signage and talk to the public.

We need to fund NPS and NSF.

Thread with an email being sent to @asn-amnat.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social members today calling for a Tri-society week of action for NSF:

Dear members:
The tri-societies (ASN, SSE,SSB) are running a ‘Week of Action for NSF’. Your engagement is crucial.

Reminder that I'm looking for grad students. Canada just decided for sanity in government, Fredericton elected a musician MP, and UNB is a great place to be. Come join me! Position is fully funded.

Amy Angert & I are recruiting 2 field technicians for demographic surveys of scarlet monkeyflower in late summer-fall. Please spread word to any potentially interested candidates! jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/217...

She was an incredible science writer. Her prose is beautiful. I taught The Edge of the Sea to freshmen in a "welcome to college, take a required writing course" class.

Also she asked E.B. White at the New Yorker to write about pesticides and he demurred. Carson: guess I'll roll up my sleeves...

Standing Up for Invasive Species (Gift Article) Artists and scientists are finding ways to highlight troublesome plants and animals, tell their stories and, in some cases, use them as raw materials.

So I’m in the New York Times today 👀 😃 in a nice piece on artists and invasive species featuring our new exhibition at Carnegie Museum on invasive plants nyti.ms/42fFzpa

Reassessing niche partitioning in MacArthur’s warblers: foraging behaviour, morphology and diet differentiation in a phylogenetic context | Biology Letters Owing in large part to Robert MacArthur’s classic research, wood warblers in the family Parulidae are textbook exemplars of species competition and niche partitioning. Conventional wisdom suggests tha...

A lot of blood sweat and tears put into this one: we revisit Robert MacArthur's classic warbler study—with @eliotmiller.bsky.social and colleagues—using, among other techniques, fecal metabarcoding.
🧪🦉
📸 Ronnie d'Entremont
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
@psubiodept.bsky.social

The US Forest Service Forest Inventory & Analysis is just incredible — and also the Forest Atlas is gorgeous research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/6...

Miller's paper is the bizarro Brown paper! Two analyses of FIA plot data: one that focuses on where the logging is happening and one that shines a light on where the logging is not happening!

Tomorrow I'm going to introduce Kathryn Miller's paper "National parks in the eastern United States harbor important older forest structure compared with matrix forests" — also based on USFS FIA data (and NPS I&M)...

My students read Michelle Brown's "Timber harvest as the predominant disturbance regime in northeastern U.S. forests: effects of harvest intensification" which uses USFS FIA data to track trends in logging...

Listen I know college kids aren't watching Seinfeld but I'm writing a lecture for my advanced Forest Ecology class based on Bizarro Jerry because that's where I'm finding joy at the moment...

Absolutely!

Low‐cost observations and experiments return a high value in plant phenology research Plant ecologists in the Anthropocene are tasked with documenting, interpreting, and predicting how plants respond to environmental change. Phenology, the timing of seasonal biological events includin...

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

“the process of knitting itself mirror ecological patterns — it requires attention to structure, repetition, and adaptability"

— my student's written response to the prompt "Why would a forest ecology course include an assignment to knit a wool hat?"

three small lego plates decorated with a single layer of brown and green flat, square legos that create three pixelated pictures of an herbarium specimen, complete with label (blank white 2x2 square) and envelope packet (1x2 piece with envelope styling).

Organizing the interactive activity for my talk in the 'Celebrating New England Herbaria: Research, Teaching, Community, and Outreach' session at this weekend's Northeast Natural History Conference.

My kids created the first two specimens, mine is the Polystichum acrostichoides.

Unfortunately we didn't enough historical phenology data, but we used the log books and the published flora from 1895 for a floristic change study.

a row of 4 mason jars full of maple syrup — the syrup ranges from a light golden amber to a deep rich coffee brown.

this cohort has made some amazing syrup!

Dartmouth doctoral student studies contaminants in maple syrup HANOVER — While attaining a master’s at Yale during the COVID-19 pandemic, Emily Sigman began tapping the Norway maples in the backyard of her New Haven, Conn., home.

My maple sugaring students get a shout out for assisting at one of Emily's research sites!

www.vnews.com/Dartmouth-st...

we cored 30 red pines in a stand that’s been tagged a monitored by students since before my time; last fall my students had recorded presence/absense of invasive bittersweet vines in the crowns of each tree. We collected vine “cookies” with loppers for trees with vines to date the invasion.

a mounted tree core with a post it note. the tree core is blonde with distinct tan lines from the tree rings; the core is mounted on a piece of blonde wood that also cradles a cross-section of a bittersweet vine. the post-it note says “I’m 40 years old and I have vines!!!”

class project tracking the impacts of invasive vines on campus red pine trees