From the Archives: Aging Like a Fine Orchid

IMMORTAL BEAUTIES

By Taryn Plumb / Globe Correspondent

April 19, 2012

The lanky man with dirt-caked gardener’s hands and the twinge of a Texas drawl points to a small round nub at the base of a potted flower.

“See this?” He leans down in the muted light of the greenhouse, rubs it gently with his thumb. “New growth.”

Giving the unbloomed orchid an approving look, he nods. “Look at that growth. That’s healthy.”

As far as Jim Marchand, 63, is concerned, orchids are the “ultimate plant obsession.” The Hopkinton resident and Texas native has been collecting, cultivating, and hybridizing the elegant, diverse, and vibrantly colorful family of flowers for nearly 20 years.

And now, he has a whole lot more to care for: He recently came into possession of one of the area’s most prized private orchid collections. Formerly owned by Victor DeRosa, who in his late 80s has retired and recently moved to Florida, the flowers are what remain of what was once one of the most successful cut flower businesses in the Northeast, DeRosa Florist in Natick.

The collection includes roughly 400 hybrid cattleyas, members of a prolific genus known for its variety of colors and large blooms (as well as its long-held position at the center of corsages); several dozen Paphiopedilum examples (most commonly known as lady’s slippers, featuring wild, unusual, and often spotted flowers); and a handful of other genera.

Most of the plants, which are housed at a private estate in the area, will be transferred to a greenhouse on Marchand’s property sometime this summer. He will sell off the duplicates.

Marchand purchased the collection last September, but declined to say how much he paid, noting that it has much more than monetary value. DeRosa was not available to be interviewed for this article.

“They talk about that orchid obsession,” said Marchand, an assistant professor and researcher in the anatomy and cellular biology department at Tufts University who left his hometown of Houston more than 25 years ago. “I’ve got it.”

As, said Marchand, does DeRosa, an old friend who sold Marchand his first orchid decades ago, and who entrusted the collection to him with the express purpose of keeping it largely intact.

“He still thinks of it as his,” Marchand said. “It’s his love.”

After emigrating from Italy in the midst of the Depression, DeRosa started his business in 1941, according to past Globe stories. His biggest business was in cut orchids and corsages. For decades, according to Marchand, DeRosa controlled the Northeast orchid market, and won top awards for his plants from the Massachusetts Orchid Society and the American Orchid Society.

But the game changed in the 1990s, when competition started coming from overseas, and orchids could be had for much lower prices at home improvement and department stores.

When things were going well, the collection was five times its current size; but DeRosa whittled it down over the years, keeping the prize-winners and his personal favorites, Marchand said. In a 2001 interview, DeRosa told the Globe he had 25,000 orchid plants in many varieties that he started from seed, cloned in his Natick lab, and sent in bottles to be grown in Hilo, Hawaii.

“These are the special ones that Victor’s collected over 30 to 40 years,” Marchand said of his new collection. “Some are unique. No one else has them.”

Sheer diversity is one of the hallmarks of the orchid, according to expert William Cullina, author of “Understanding Orchids.” No one knows how many varieties there are, he said, with new ones are being discovered all the time, but he put the ballpark figure as 25,000 to 35,000 species.

“You never run out of orchids, there are always new ones,” said Cullina, who lives on Southport Island in Maine. He also described an “elegance and sophistication” that are not found in other flowers. “There’s an almost infinite variety of form and color and size. For a collector, it’s perfect.”

Marchand certainly feels that way. His first green-thumbing was crossbreeding rhododendrons; when he tired of that, he moved on to orchids, which he called the most highly evolved flower, and also the most difficult to grow, requiring a perfect amount of water and sun exposure.

But, he noted, “they’re immortal, as long as you take care of them.”

Ultimately, DeRosa’s collection will accentuate Marchand’s own assemblage of a few hundred flowers, his favorite being the lady’s slippers, which he likes for their “weird” look.

“These orchids are part of Victor,” Marchand said as he stood in the greenhouse housing them. But after 15 or 20 years watching his friend cultivate them, seeing them bloom, he added, “the collection has become part of my life, too.”

The potted orchids sat all around in various levels of rows; none were in bloom. Patches of clover grew in pots with some of them; others had outgrown their confines, their spaghetti-like roots hanging out in tangled protrusions.

Marchand walked around to inspect them, rubbing his fingers over their thick leaves, testing the dampness of their soil. As he worked, he explained that the collection has its biggest bloom in winter, although it can bloom all year round, lasting anywhere from three weeks to three months.

Many of them, though, he has never even seen bloom. And, because most of the flowers are not labeled — DeRosa was so familiar with them that he could tell what they were just by looking at their foliage — Marchand doesn’t know what many of them are.

“There are some beauties I haven’t seen bloomed,” he said. “It’s a big mystery.”

Twisting a dead leaf off a plant, he shrugged. “They all need work.”

He noted that some were recently infected by scale insects; he sprayed them with insecticide. He will eventually repot all of them, and divide others that have overgrown their pots.

He pulled one off a shelf, carrying it to a work table that was a bramble of tipped pots, clippers, scoops, and screwdrivers. Leaves lay scattered on the floor, blown in from outside through the open entryway.

He set to work on dividing the flower, removing it from its pot, cutting off its dead roots, then repotting it with a mulch-like mixture, broken clay bits, and foam pieces that aid with oxygen and drainage.

“It’s very peaceful, having your hands on plants,’’ Marchand said.

“This is why I do it.’’

Original story link.

Photos by Bill Greene/Globe Staff, and Jim Marchand

The Social Society of...Worms...

Science Cafe Woo

Posted on Jan. 16, 2016 in “Faculty”

Professor Jagan Srinivasan to explain nematode research at Science Cafe Woo

We unearth them when we’re gardening. We use them to bait fish. We mark the arrival of spring – what is that, again? – with the robins that appear and begin plucking them from the recently thawed soil.

But what most people don’t realize is that humans share very distinct characteristics with certain worms when it comes to vital social processes such as mating and bonding.

Yes, you read that right.

Worms.

“People say to me, “What, wait… this is such a tiny, microscopic, 1-millimeter-long worm – how can that tell us something about human communication?” says Jagan Srinivasan, assistant professor in WPI’s Department of Biology and Biotechnology, who has devoted significant research to understanding the social language of the nematode worm – and what its behaviors can tell us about our own. “The worm is not too different from humans.”

Srinivasan, who runs the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Chemical Biology at Gateway Park, will speak about his ongoing research and findings in “The Underground Social Network: Studying Communication in Worms,” a discussion at 6:30 Monday evening (Jan. 18) at Science Café Woo (NU Café, 335 Chandler St.).

As he explains, the specific nematode worm he analyzes, C. elegans, has been found to have a genome that is 30 percent similar to that of humans, although they are essentially simple creatures – they have 1,000 total cells, compared with our estimated 37.2 trillion. A major portion of the cellular architecture of worms is dedicated to their nervous system, approximately 302 are neurons – they apply a complex array of processes to attract, find, and identify mates.

Particularly, as they grow, they secrete distinct chemical compounds into the environment to connect with other worms. Using what Srinivasan calls a “very intricate chemical alphabet,” they secrete different chemicals at different stages, with their “chemical repertoire” changing throughout their short life cycle.

Surviving on E. coli, the nematode population is dominantly hermaphroditic – meaning that the majority of specimens contain both female and male reproductive organs – and lives for a maximum of 20 to 22 days, with just four of those days focused on reproduction.

“Even though the worm is simplistic, what it is trying to do is put a chemical alphabet together to communicate,” says Srinivasan.

And although it lacks in sight, the nematode shows strengths when it comes to other senses. “The worm cannot see like humans, but it can smell better than humans,” he said.

So what similarities do we share with the simple-celled creatures?

The goal throughout his studies has been to determine just how much chemical signals play a role in human communication. And ultimately, further research could potentially lead to a better understanding of – as well as cures for – various social disorders, such as autism, he says.

“We are tuned to certain concentrations of chemicals,” he explains, using the metaphor of finding just the right amount of cologne or perfume to apply to be attractive to a potential mate – without coming off overpowering, or, conversely, underwhelming. In the end, it comes down to the question of “What is the right concentration for me to act?”

Srinivasan, in turn, notes that he has to find his own unique balance.

“People who have absolutely no scientific background will be listening to why it’s important to be studying worms,” he says. “I’m going to try and make it as simplistic as possible for the general public, yet maintain the big scientific questions.”

Interested in learning more? Catch his talk Monday night at NU Café — or visit the Srinivasan Lab website: http://users.wpi.edu/~jsrinivasan/index.html.

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

Reliving tween awkwardness onstage

Vox Spelling Bee
Posted on Jan 14, 2016 in "Arts"

VOX Presents The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

One is a gruff outsider who nearly saw victory in a previous year—but had to be knocked out of the competition due to a nasty nut allergy.

Another is recovering from a hiatus after an “unfortunate incident,” and feels like the only sane one in the bunch.

Then there’s the overzealous former champion who’s never quite moved on from her victory—and thus lives vicariously through each year’s competitors.

These are just a few of the compelling, quirky, and endearing characters in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a one-act musical comedy being showcased in a production this weekend by VOX Musical Theatre, WPI’s student musical theatre company.

“There’s something in the show for everybody, as the different kinds of humor come from many different kinds of characters,” says aerospace engineering major Timothy Jones ’18, who plays vice principal Douglas Panch. “You’ll be laughing one minute at the show’s jokes—some of which change every night—then you’ll see how these characters are all surprisingly human, and you’ll really feel for them and their problems.”

The show will be performed in Alden Memorial tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m., and on Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free.

Based on a book by Rachel Sheinkin, with music and lyrics by William Finn, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee follows six tween-age spelling aficionados—and those on the proverbial sidelines cheering and jeering for them—attempting to spell their way to victory in an annual competition. Along the way, they sing, dance, share their aspirations and goals—and, in a unique aspect of the show, welcome audience members onstage to fumble their way through words right along with them.

“It provides a really fun challenge for the actors who have to channel their inner awkward tween,” says director Douglas Davis ’16, an interactive media and game development major. “Everyone remembers how awkward their middle school years were, and this show capitalizes on that.”

And at least four audience members at each performance will get to relive that prepubescent squeamishness. Just prior to each of the three shows, a quartet of viewers will be randomly picked and screened to participate as “ridiculous characters,” Davis explains.

Given that, “anything can—and probably will—happen,” said Matthew Zielonko ’17, a computer science major who plays 12-year-old William Barfee (the one whose aversion to peanuts forced him to bow out of the 24th annual Bee). “It’s going to be a new show every single time we go on stage—not just for the audience, but for the cast, pit, and tech, as well, which is going to be a lot of fun.”

His character has a secret spelling trick: A “magic foot,” as Zielonko explains, with which he traces out words on the floor prior to saying them aloud. A veteran of musical theatre—he’s been performing since he was 5—Zielonko described Barfee as not equipped with a large cachet of friends, and a little hard to get to know at first—but once people do, he has them laughing with his witty sense of humor.

“I’ve never had to play a villian-ish character before, so it’s a lot of fun to get to be mean,” he says, also noting that Barfee is quite the dancer. Calling the overall experience a “challenge,” he said “it puts me out of my comfort zone.”

Meanwhile, Sonya Maria Douglas ’16, an independently designed major in biopsychology also minoring in musical performance, portrays Rona Lisa Peretti, who won the Bee 22 years prior, and considers her role hosting the bee the highlight of her year. She reminds everyone of her own personal winning word, syzygy—as defined: when the moon aligns with the earth and sun—and is, as Douglas put it, wacky but sincere, and “a little over the top about everything.”

She watches the Bee “with the intensity and awe of some sports fanatics,” says Douglas, who has been involved in musical theatre since the third grade and described an “extra energy and passion” in it that she hasn’t found with other types of theatre. “Being that over the moon about a spelling bee is pretty silly,” she adds, but “it makes for some very entertaining moments.”

Overall, “it’s a fantastically witty musical comedy,” she says. “It’s engaging, it’s hysterical, there’s audience participation, there’s improv, and it’s a different experience every night.”

Emphasizing that the VOX show is free, she encourages people to come see the production more than once. “If you have time, you have no excuse—unless you are just allergic to fun,” she jokes.

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link. 

From the Archives: Talk Amongst Yourselves

Talk amongst yourselves

While teens still 'marinate,' slang travels faster these days with help of the Internet

By Taryn Plumb, Globe Correspondent | October 4, 2007

Much like a condiment, "gnar" can punch up almost any sentence.

Eighteen-year-old Casey Aylward employs the throaty derivative of "gnarly" in instances where everyday adjectives can't quite describe his shock, distaste, amazement, or admiration.

Example? The Groveland teen referred to a stylized skateboarding trick he witnessed recently with "That was gnar!"

"Gnar is its own entity," mused Aylward, standing on the Hampton Beach strip, shaggy thicket of brown hair corralled by a backwards baseball cap.

Other colorful expressions in his cache include "bunk," for disgust, "dank" in cases where "awesome" might normally apply, and "smash" for contentment.

"It's more or less just coming up with your own stuff," he said from behind mirrored sunglasses reflecting hordes of pedestrians, right hand flicking a half-smoked cigarette. He and his friends "take expressions that have been around for a while and make them our own."

Walk up to anybody anywhere - whether it's Hampton Beach's main boulevard, a swarming city street, or even a white-collar office building - and you'll get a notebook-full of slang. Everyone, the teen crowd especially, has a reservoir of witty, inventive, and sometimes crude sayings - so much so that it might seem like lingo has overrun formal American English. In some cases, it has, with terms such as "dis" and "phat" finding their places in modern dictionaries.

But while it's tough to quantify whether slang is, in fact, more prevalent these days, it's clear there's a growing effort to create, share, catalog, and foster it.

A Web search of "slang," for instance, yields an ecosystem of sites, covering anything from 1960s flower child lingo to Japanese jargon. The giant of those is urbandictionary.com, a wellspring of slang that contains more than a million entries - with at least 2,000 new ones a day - and allows users to vote on and contribute their own unique phrases. Since its launch in 2001, the site's popularity has skyrocketed, according to Alexa.com, a company that tracks Internet trends; site traffic has grown 7 percent in the past three months.

In addition, there are the traditional and continuing drivers of slang: hip-hop, linguistically creative TV shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and hundreds of books, such as "Knickers in a Twist: A Dictionary of British Slang."

Noting its prevalence, some scholars and philologists - thought to be the traditional defenders of proper English - even call slang an essential component of speech.

"It enriches language," said Rod Kessler, a professor of English at Salem State College who pointed out that Geoffrey Chaucer used some risque slang in his landmark work, "The Canterbury Tales."

"You show creativity when you use slang. It's colorful, picturesque, imaginative, and shocking."

Poetic, too, says Michael Adams, an English professor at Indiana University Bloomington and author of the book,

"Slang: The People's Poetry." For instance, slang is inherently metaphorical, he explains - take the perennial favorites "what's up" and "cool," which ultimately have nothing to do with gravity or temperature. Also, "it allows people to be inventive," he said. "Everybody has the capacity to make it up."

Madeleine Revill and her friends certainly do.

Their unusual way of speaking involves playfully clipping the endings from words - a technique they call "abbrevs."

The abbrevs most frequently peppering the Middleton 16-year-old's speech include "presh," "essench," "whatev," "ridic," "awk," "totes," and "obvi." To decode: precious, essentially, whatever, ridiculous, awkward, totally, and obvious.

As for using them in a sentence: Someone with "ish" ("issues") might create an "awk" (awkward) situation because they're acting like "a sketch."

"Why do I abbreve? It's just fun. People laugh at it," said Revill. "It sets me and my friends apart from other people. It's our own language."

Aylward and his crowd have similarly improvised their own dialect.

If they want to get going, for instance, they say "let's hit it" or "let's get hustlin'."

If they see a good-looking girl, she's "slammin" or "brutal." (Those with less luck in the beauty lingo department get hit with "haggard.")

If they're talking amongst themselves, they use "son" or "bro."

They occasionally pull out some retro terms, too, including "rad," "solid," "tubular," and "peace out."

"We try to keep it real sick," said Aylward, taking a cigarette break from his job emptying quarters from arcade games and loading piles of candy into claw machines at Hampton's Funarama.

Alyward's "bro," 19-year-old Ryan Jackson of Merrimack, N.H., agreed, "We try to bring West Coast back, with a lot of vintage slang."

Stratham, N.H., 16-year-old Ellie Willis's supply of maxims is also of the Cali persuasion.

"The cheese" refers to money, and "emo" is a qualifier for overly sensitive people, she explained as she prepared slushies and sugar-sprinkled gobs of batter at Blink's Fry Doe on the Hampton strip. And if she's bored? "I'm gonna commit."

Given that expanse of tastes - and the fact that slang comes and goes rather quickly - it's difficult to pinpoint trends or determine which phrases are ragingly popular and which are stale. "Cool can't be universal," noted Adams. "That's against the whole purpose of slang." Which is, he explained, to test social limits. "Slang is an instrument of rebellion."

While most teens didn't put it so bluntly, many did defend their freedom to speak as they choose.

"I don't want people telling me I can't say what I want," Kelly Sunderland, 18, who lives in Pepperell but "chills in Bedford."

"The way people talk shows how different they are."

Her most flavorful phrasings have to do with coming and going: For the former, she'll "post up"; for the latter, she "dips."

She admitted - none too regrettably - that her mother often responds to the way she talks with quizzical looks.

Naturally, though, not all adults are flummoxed by today's barrage of sometimes-indecipherable teen lingo.

John Walsh, a 41-year-old from Hampton, for instance, said it's important for each generation to have their own idiom. He compared language to branded clothing, noting, "It gives teenagers a way to be part of a group."

In some cases, adults, too. Greg Revill of Salem, for his part, found his daughter's pruned manner of speaking so catchy that he adopted a few phrases, including "whatev," "awk," and, for extreme instances of weirdness, "awk city."

"Color in any language is good," he said.

Madeleine shares that mindset. "If everyone talked the same way," she said, "everyone would be the same."

And that, as Aylward might say, would be gnar.

Original story link. 

From the Archives: Skateboard Canvases

G COVER

Skateboards are their canvas

Skateboards (some without the wheels) are more than just wooden planks — they are canvases for artistic expression

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Close your eyes and imagine you’re meandering through an art museum. Maybe there’s a Warhol nearby, an iconic Pop Art soup can. In another gallery, a Degas, his elegant ballerinas in their frothy tutus. Elsewhere, ancient statues, their details dulled by millennia.

And then, amid all that, hanging bottoms-up, sans wheels, covered with abstracts and geometrics and landscapes and portraits - a collection of skateboards?

“It’s a medium, not just a wooden plank,’’ said Vanessa Ly, of Malden, a 27-year-old artist who exhibits and sells boards with conceptual designs. “There’s form to it, there’s texture. It’s a fun medium to work with, an interesting medium to work with.’’

Decks have long been a means of artistic expression and individuality among skateboarders. But now these functional works of art are beginning to ride the rim between the cultural periphery and the mainstream.

Influenced by Frank Miller or Jackson Pollock or Picasso, artists are exhibiting boards in fine art (and not-so-fine art) galleries. They hang in cafes, bars, and tattoo parlors. They’re amassed in the homes of private collectors and celebrity skaters.

Classically trained artists are lured by their form and their edge. Public art projects like Duxbury Art Association’s annual Skateboard Art Challenge encourage them as a medium. Local skate shops have even opened their own gallery spaces.

Skateboard art “is crossing the line into more of a legitimacy,’’ acknowledged Evan Kanarakis, 36, founder of Devil Street Decks in Portland, Maine, whose roughly 10 freelance artists based around the world (including in and around Boston) create and sell original artwork boards.

But, he added, “it’s still on the fringe of what art is. First and foremost, it’s a skateboard.’’

Meaning that, no matter how creative the designs that decorate its underside, it’s meant to be ridden - and not just hang on the wall.

Many skateboard artists like to see the scratches, gouges, hunks ripped out by curbs, and “truck bites’’ (when spinning wheels take a slice out of the board’s edge) that come with attempting and mastering tricks. It means their art is alive, that it’s appreciated. (Still, some do prefer that their hand-designed prototypes not be subjected to the rough treatment of the street.)

“It is introducing something usable, it is an interactive art form,’’ said James A. Fox of Peabody, who designs for Devil Street Decks. “This is art that people will see every single day.’’

And when someone wants to ride your art?

“That’s pretty sick,’’ said Fox, dressed in black, multiple piercings on his ears.

Many boards have a graffiti, graphic arts, graphic novel, or comic book feel, while others are clearly more influenced by high art. A few artists even refashion used or broken boards into various forms of sculpture.

Typically, designs cover the bottom of the board, because that’s what’s visible when skaters go airborne, but also, because the top is covered with grip tape and often gets the most wear. Fittingly, though, some artists defy even this convention, especially in the case of longboards, which are used more for traveling than tricks.

“There are no rules on style,’’ Kanarakis explained.

That’s obvious in the work of Devil Street’s menagerie of artists: Some boards feature homages to Pollock, with drips and dribbles and splotches and scratches. Others boast geometric designs and are heavy with patterns of distorted flowers and sunbursts. Still others are irreverent - cans of spray paint (or, at least, what look like it) come to life, with beaks and arms; weird cylindrical houses with trees growing out of them.

Ly, who works in an architecture firm and doesn’t skateboard (although, she freely admits with a laugh, she’s “attempted’’), creates stencil-and-spray paint designs with a touch of whimsy and mysterious juxtaposition: A flower phonograph; gnarled trees; a dark, rambling tree house.

Fox, meanwhile, uses spray paint and acrylics to create graffiti-esque takes on Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam’’; graphic-styled angels; and a series of long-legged femme fatales with capes of red hair, cigarettes, and smoking guns.

A blank skateboard is “raw and interesting,’’ said Fox, a cook by profession who holds an art education degree and looks younger than his 45 years. He added that he finds absolutely “no excitement’’ in a plain canvas.

Mykim Dang also finds traditional canvas quite bland. She hasn’t worked with anything but skateboards for several years.

A 24-year-old Boston-based video producer, who goes by “M’’ for short, Dang started riding and designing in high school, and now exhibits regularly and sells custom and manufactured pieces through her company, Dichotomy Skateboards, which she founded with a childhood friend.

Almost exclusively portraiture, her pieces are inspired from seconds-long interactions with strangers or people she sees on the street. They are ethereal and shadowed images of men, women, children. They may be close up, distant, silhouetted, partially hidden, stoic, praying, biting their nails, smoking cigarettes.

She’s intrigued by a board’s restricted space, the format and the wood itself. Ultimately, she said, “I really want to challenge the norms of what is considered art.’’

Others do this by basing designs around a board’s former, mostly airborne, existence.

Ben MacAdam, for instance, has crafted abstract shapes out of the lacerations, exposed wood, missing chunks, and chewed-up surfaces of used boards.

“It was part of the life they lived,’’ MacAdam said as he stood in #5 Gallery on Rocky Neck, two of his pieces hanging nearby.

“You can see people had fun with these boards,’’ agreed Joe Brancaleone, a 24-year-old longboarder who runs the custom design enterprise Hemoglobin Boarding Co. of Gloucester and plans to exhibit at #5 Gallery.

His shop’s designs? Coiled cobras, an awakening Frankenstein, a menacing Grim Reaper (is there any other kind?), sexy sailor girls - all hand-painted by a handful of artists.

MacAdam stepped back to examine several displayed on the wall. “You don’t have to be a hardcore skateboarder to appreciate it,’’ he said, shrugging. “These could be in somebody’s house or . . .’’

Brancaleone finished: “Underneath someone.’’

See more photos here. Original story link here.