I am going to start holding café gatherings in wireless locations so some workshop leaders can learn how to use Wordpress and find easy access to RSS feeds. One of them, our very own Simon King, the butterfly man Phil Harris, just sent me this for you.

‘I took some students to Loe Bar with Keith Spurgin to look at the fascinating plants around the 1st of April. We were lucky enough to capture this photo of a snake at Loe pool. It was pleasantly soaking up the sun in the hedge with three other of its sort. It was just after the gate before the cottage over by the Culdrose stream end.

Here’s a note about our find…

Arrived in the car Park and then slammed the Van door. I shut it in a particular way and trapped my finger in the door - yes the nail has now three weeks later completely dropped off - a bad start.

Proceeded to walk out along the path through the woods past the bench and open water. As we walked through the gate into the lane I noticed a Lizard, as I pointed it out to the students my eye caught a movement further up in the hedge and there was a black adder with three normal adders. All were at eye level and at peace with all of us watching them at close quarters. They had obviously just hibernated in that spot and were waking up together.’

Dates for the diary…

DATE: Sunday 14th June
TIME: 10.00am to 1.00pm
EVENT: theirwork: Butterfly Recording Day
DESCRIPTION: theirwork is a pilot community online mapping project based on Loe Pool. The project maps all types of data. The goal of this day is to see and record some butterflies, compare data to data recorded last year and to find a nice spot on the spectacular cliffs to eat. Data is being collected over time to assess butterfly activity in this area. All welcome.
GROUP LEADER: Phil Harris, an expert on butterflies and on introducing people to butterflies
MEET: Tie Rock car park (type into Google Maps search field “loe pool car parks” to find Tie Rock car park marker)
BRING: Local pack lunch with something to share, walking shoes, sun cream, and if you want, a friend or more and your favourite recording equipment (can be anything from a pencil to the latest sat nav!)
PRICE: £2.00
CONTACT: Dominica Williamson, facilitator. Email dom@theirwork.org

DATE: Sunday 21st June
TIME: 11.00am to 2.00pm
EVENT: theirwork: Building a Fathers’ Day Midsummer Picture
DESCRIPTION: theirwork is a pilot community online mapping project based on Loe Pool. The project maps all types of data. The goal of this event is to record, via mixed-media drawings, Loe Pool’s magical sandy bar on this special day. Parents and their children and friends and their children’s friends are particularly encouraged to come and make pictures for the theirwork online map and for taking home to their family.
GROUP LEADER: Rebecca Harvey, an expert ceramist whose work likes to be fuelled by drawing
MEET: Tie Rock car park (type into Google Maps search field “loe pool car parks” to find Tie Rock car park marker)
BRING: Local pack lunch with something to share, walking shoes, sun cream and your favourite drawing equipment (can be anything from pencils to the latest cameras!)
PRICE: £2.00
CONTACT: Dominica Williamson, facilitator. Email dom@theirwork.org

OTHER THEIRWORK EVENTS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2009:
theirwork Star Gazing Gathering Take Two
A Summer’s Mineral Trail
A Fungi Factual Autumn Walk

CONTACT: Dominica Williamson, facilitator. Email dom@theirwork.org to receive updates about these events and others, and to request information about the theirwork project in general.

Thirty people eagerly arrived for theirwork’s Star Gazing night, which was led by Brian Sheen, Director of The Roseland Observatory.

Brian arranged for everyone to meet at 8.00pm so that there was a chance to see his Star Gazing tools whilst the night sky rose. It also gave us the opportunity to have tea and biscuits and meet new people and old friends. People came from Gulval, Hayle, Camborne, Leedstown, Helston, Mullion, St. Keverne and there were past residents of Cornwall, visitors on working holidays who came as far as from Germany and transient residents who came from ‘up country’! There were at least five amateur gazers in the audience, three children and the rest of us who sat somewhere in between, so Brian had many different types of knowledge to reach.

To set the scene, Brian simulated a planetarium using Stellarium, an open source planetarium software for PC and Mac. Note, I’ve downloaded my copy and I’m already learning from it. It’s quick to download and user friendly. Go to http://www.stellarium.org and get your copy now and see your desktop turn into the night sky.

Stellarium
Using Stellarium, Brian walked us through some of the key planets and constellations, pointing out in particular how the North Star never moved position – demonstrating how everything else ‘spun’ around it. He showed us the Moon and Jupiter close up and asked the audience to call out other planets they would like to see magnified.

He then shared with us other tools that are key in helping you to learn about the night sky. All are explained on the Roseland’s Observatory Links page www.roselandobservatory.com but here’s a brief overview.

Key websites
Heavens Above www.heavens-above.com - star, planet and satellite information
Space Weather www.spaceweather.com - what’s happening in the night sky
Stellarium www.stellarium.org - planetarium

Best Magazines
Astronomy Now (UK) www.astronomynow.com
BBC Sky at Night www.skyatnightmagazine.com

Good Kit
Binoculars - Most people start off with a pair of binoculars normally 10 X 50, these can be hand held. A pair of Celestron 15 X 70 bins is better for astronomy, they need to be fixed to a good tripod and are excellent for looking at star clusters.
Telescopes - Should at least be 75mm if refractors or 150mm if reflectors, buy from a recognised astronomy shop.
Green Lasers - A pen like pointer that produces a green beam of light that you can use to point out features in the night sky. Get from: Telescope House www.telescopehouse.com
Clestron Sky Scouts - A global positioning hand held device that enables you to locate, see and hear stars and planets. Get from: SCS Astro www.scsastro.co.uk for information see www.celestron.com/skyscout/index.php
Planespheres - Sky charts so you can locate stars and planets. These are available from any good bookshop.

Geology
Brian then talked in brief about the geology of the Moon and Mars and gave us the chance to understand and handle real meteorites.

He explained about the seas of the moon. The seas of the moon were so named because people saw them like dark running rivers across the surface. He showed us a piece of Basalt and explained the seas on the moon are basalt basins, otherwise known as maria or seas. He then showed us some granite from Cornwall and explained that the rest of the moon rock was not unlike our very own granite.

Brian then produced some red rusty rock – and explained this was not unlike the rock found on the surface of Mars - its redness coming from hematite, an iron oxide. About 26 Martian rocks have been found on Earth. He then explained terrestrial hematite can be connected to aqueous environments hence perhaps is part of the answer to the question “is there life on Mars?”

Questions
Key to the night was the fact that the audience could then ask Brian questions about any aspect of astronomy. This gave people time to build on their knowledge and questions continued into the night. Here are three key questions out of the many asked -

Is Pluto a planet? When Pluto was first discovered in 1930 it was the only object beyond the orbit of Neptune hence it was natural to call it a planet. Recently many more objects have been found in the far parts of the solar system. School children and other beginners were going to have to learn about a lot of new planets or about separate groups of planets, hence it was decided to call Pluto a Dwarf Planet.

Why have we never seen the back of the Moon? The Moon turns on its axis in the same length of time as it orbits the Earth (28 days) hence we only see the same part of the Moon from here on Earth.

Why is Arthur, at Goonhilly not used by Jodrell Bank Observatory? Arthur would make a useful addition to the Jodrell Bank Observatory, however it requires a lot of upkeep beyond the resources of Jodrell Bank, especially in these days of financial constraints.

What exactly is a Meteor Shower? When a comet passes close to the Sun the ice holding it together evaporates releasing a lot of dust. Years later, in some cases the Earth’s orbit passes through the dust cloud and the atmosphere causes the comet dust to burn up and results in a meteor shower.

Lunar Eclipse and birthday stars
Before we went outside we asked if we could see the night sky on Stellarium again – as we were about to see it for real. Emily aged four was due to turn five at midnight (15th August) and so she saw the stars fly past, as they would be on her birthday. Annabel, who was to turn seven on Saturday 16th August, learnt what would happen on her birthday - a Lunar Eclipse! See their enchanting drawings, and Ella’s (Emily’s sister), here, on our theirwork Flickr site.

Shooting Stars and the outside
We drank tea and ate cake whilst watching shooting stars from the Perseid shower and whilst gazing at the Moon and Jupiter. The North Star was visible, and although the sky could have been clearer, we were still star struck and more firmly orientated on our Earth. I think the time outside, more than any other feedback, has been best captured by Emily’s wonderful image below.

PS Warnings
Don’t look at the Sun with the naked eye because you could badly damage your sight. Use Green Lasers wisely. Please don’t point them at people’s eyes, or at airplanes that are low in the night sky because they can cause damage to eyesight even at a long distance.

I ran home from Helston on Friday, around the lake. I am trying to radically cut down on petrol. I left my car in for repairs and decided not to even take the bus back. Needless to say, I didn’t geo-code as I went, but I looked fast for what I knew and clasped onto water. (It was a hot morning.)

Key things that flitted past me: gorse seed pods, a forest of Foxgloves at Debigna and wow, I am pretty sure a Silver-studded Blue butterfly Plebeius argus on the bar. (I stopped and got close). In ten miles I saw three people. Nice.

Nikki and I last walked the beginning of this route two months ago and recorded the gorse in flower. Above is a drawing of it. We were really concentrating on Goat Willow. (I am just finishing painting this, so more on that later.) But the yellow of the gorse and the willow were running close together, and the smell made us notice the gorse. What Malibu memories it brings back. As its seed pods start to pop, the Western Gorse at the Lizard and Penwith peninsulas will start flowering. (In a month I will embark on painting Western Gorse. Note, this is not found at Loe Pool.)

European Gorse
Ulex europaeus

50.09255
-5.28369

50.09307
-5.28388

50.09395
-5.28397

50.09451
-5.28399

I’ve marked gorse in four places on the map so far, to show how it runs along the North side of the Cober River into the Pool. (The fruit pod explodes when ripe. In dry, sunny weather, the gorse seed pods suddenly open and the seeds explode out, with a noticeable popping noise. The seeds are thrown quite a distance from the plant. http://www.naturegrid.org.uk/biodiversity/plants/fppea.html)

from geological time, laid bare at the crumbly cliffs on each side,

to the (modern time) myths as a succession of strangers come and go home,

and tell of unexpected and unforgettable encounters with the sublime.

rare bugs - crawl through - rare flora - beneath - rare trees

- but perhaps it is the Bar itself that is truly rare -

mythic power
the slow poetry of place

So what can an old neo-modernist artist contribute (suggestions are welcomed)?
other than - avoid the clichés - go for the bigger picture - go outside the bigger picture
or perhaps just a sideways look?

SO :- Chris took a close-up photo of the tallest tree in the valley (a Scots pine?) and I saw it sideways
and gave it an azure tint and thought of bark ridges breaking, like the waves on the other side of the Bar
—— but in very-very slow motion. Steve

Dr. Tony Stebbing, who helped me with very early research, described that “Cornwall is like the bow of a ship. This part of Britain is heading south due to climate change”. He and Sarah Myles of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust both said that this part of Britain was an important area for people to map change. Loe Pool was chosen as the first area for theirwork to map because of its positioning and watery habitat. It lies very close to the most southerly point of Britain. In addition, as William Howarth points out, wetland areas have become important places to examine because they help us to see how place functions, and help us to see new ways in which to think about a place (2001: 65). ‘In their wildness, wetlands dispossess readers of old codes and lead towards a new syntax, where phrase may begin to reassemble’ (ibid).

Here’s a meeting I had with Sarah about some of the GIS data held there

Get Howarth’s brilliant wetland essay if you haven’t read it (2001) ‘Reading the Wetlands’ in Adams, C., Hoelscher, S. and Till, K. (eds) Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, p65.

The brilliant eco-exhibitionist Matt Groshek pointed me towards this book. Later, I will give away more about Matt.

As a neogeographist, and perhaps some would say a pyschogeographist, next year I am going to present three projects that map elements of the physical and virtual world. Each project is linked not just by mapping but also by the fact that they ask indirectly for people to take action about the environment in which they live. Harnessing the power of the web, as well as the commercial image, the drawn picture and some people-power; the fields of ethnography, phenomenology, sustainability and open source are going to be explored.

people-power = theirwork and quotes Emmet’s nice language (can’t remember which post to ref., but it was one like this that he wrote about theirwork.)
neogeographist = I believe I am one of the new geographers who’s using locative technology and this quotes platial.com users (again, lost which post, but eh, they are banding it about.)

Will post more details about this talk later.

Steve and Mary, originally uploaded by theirwork.

Steve’s comin’ to blog here soon. He’s a great artist and dog lover. Here he is with Mary on our last butterfly walk - it was meant to be a butterfly migration day, but it rained. It was still amazing. We geocoded 88 different things.

As well as discussing blogging stuff, we’ve been chatting about developing the theirwork basemap. We’re going to look at some Wainwright drawings to inspire us. I might set up another basemap Green Map drawing workshop.

Emmet and I are currently preparing our second article for publication. Pretty ace. Here’s part of the abstract -

theirwork is a living mapmaking project, which by its nature rejects a top-down system of classification, or taxonomy, and adopts instead a system of labelling, or what has been dubbed “folksonomy”. Working from a conscious standpoint, which views authoritative and hierarchical taxonomic systems as disempowering, folksonomy enables the theirwork end-user, who works online, to collaboratively generate open-ended labels for map-based data. Forgoing other top-down systems that often produce hegemonic systems and organisations (such as copyrighted base maps and copyrighted Geographical Information Systems data), this essay descriptively reveals how theirwork is developing a rhizomatous model of collection, presentation and dissemination.

grey gurnard, originally uploaded by theirwork.

The theirwork sea mapping adventure. More to come!