Author Archives: makielb

I’m sitting in the garden looking out at. the plants. Beans in flower. Basil that needs to be harvested. Ripening tomatoes and squash. All easily see from the tble on the deck. But my mind wanders to birds. A House Wren singing behind the fence. Red-winged Blackbirds and doves overhead. A Great Egret, Trumpeter SwansContinue reading “Drawing birds”

A year and a half into the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic and the United States is slipping backwards in both the number of new cases, deaths and hospitalizations. This slide is being driven by the combination of the delta-variant and anti-vaxxers. The number of new daily cases on 3 August, 104,758 was the greatest number sinceContinue reading “The continuing Covid-19 pandemic in the United States”

As I have said before I started making a family tree in 1963. This started as a school project thanks to Mrs Weidemann at Clippert Elementary School. By the end of 1963 I had talked to my three living grandparents (my grandfather Michał Kiełb died in 1943), as well as all of my aunts andContinue reading “Family from the past”

The blueberries in the above photo were collected in the wild so to speak. At Whitefish Point we have tremendous access to several types of blueberries, both within close proximity to our cabin and on the state land across Whitefish Point Road. Before returning to Ann Arbor we picked blueberries wherever we found them. ThereContinue reading “Gifts from our gardens”

When I went to Panama a few years ago, besides vaccinations for yellow fever, hepatitis-A, hepatitis-B and typhoid I had to take malaria medications. That only left three major insect-borne diseases to be concerned about – zika, dengue fever and chagas disease. Chagas is caused by a parasite found in the feces of Triatomine bugsContinue reading “Malaria among other mosquito borne diseases”

For much of my life I have carried pencils, pens and watercolors where ever I was. In reality I had started drawing by 1956 – a very long time ago. Even while I was leading natural history tours in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s I took some time to sketch. The above photo ofContinue reading “Drawing and painting”

Little did I ever imagine living in a cabin on a sand dune overlooking Lake Superior. But now we are, since 2009. AT the cabin we are surrounded by pines. We are not only surrounded by pines, but also blueberries! Within feet of the cabin we are able to pick blueberries. The other day SusanContinue reading “Living on a sand dune”

Almost every day, when at our house or at the cabin typically starts checks the moths and other insects that are attracted to our lights. So far this year we have had over 400 species of moths that we have identified. Susan usually sees more since she will sometimes check the lights after I haveContinue reading “Our typical morning at the cabin with moths”

This afternoon we decided to head out from our cabin at Whitefish Point to search for orchids and other interesting plants. First we stopped just north of the mouth of the Tahquamenon River to show Dan Sparks-Jackson the large number of small purple fringed orchids in bloom. In a stretch of sone 20 meters thereContinue reading “Photos from today’s adventure”

The current “Covid-19” pandemic is more appropriately a SARS pandemic, and specifically the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This is a virus that is very similar to the earlier SARS pandemic around 2004. Interestingly, when I gave my TED talk on epidemics and pandemics in 2017 the first pandemic that I mentioned was SARS. That virus was oneContinue reading “The growing SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic”