Day 86, Year 11: Back in the Land of Palm Trees
Date: Saturday, January 16, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny and Warm, High of 61 degrees F
Location: Back Aboard Windbird, Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC
After a tour of another universe this morning, we are back in the land of palm trees tonight. Our day started with a fantastic breakfast prepared by Kevin with coffee and fresh baked bread served by Dillon. Kelly and Dillon, the friends we met last night, came over for breakfast. I know Kevin and Claire are going to miss them when they (Kelly and Dillon) leave Janelia this spring. After a few weeks of biking in Japan, Kelly and Dillon are both headed to Princeton to do post-doc work. Dillon is from Cambridge in the UK and is about 6’5” tall. Although I have never met the husband of our daughter-in-law Jo’s sister, Dillon reminds me of pictures of Tom Warmerdam just because of his height. Tom is also very tall at 6’7”. Tom and Jo’s sister Kath live in Southampton, about four hours from Cambridge where Dillon is from, but with Dillon’s deep interest in biking, I told him about Tom as Tom is an award winning bike frame builder. You never know, they might meet someday.
After breakfast, we said farewell to Kelly and Dillon and headed off with Kevin and Claire on a tour of Janelia Farm. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute opened their research center at Janelia Farm in 2006. Obviously money was no object in the construction of the facility. It is literally like entering another futuristic universe. All construction is glass and steel. As you walk from the new housing area where Kevin and Claire live, you walk past the Janelia mansion that was once owned by Vinton and Robert Pickens. They had two daughters, Jane and Cornelia, thus the name Janelia. From the manor house, there is a view of Sugarloaf Mountain across the Potomac River. Due to a scenic easement that was legally binding in the purchase of the property, no buildings can obscure the view of Sugarloaf. So from the manor house, you don’t even see the main research facility which is called the Landscape Building. The 900 foot-long building is built into the hill and from the manor house, you can actually walk along the entire roof line which is landscaped with many varieties of grasses. When you enter the building, you walk down three flights of stairs to the bottom floor some 275 feet below the roofline. As you walk down the stairs, glass is above you and in front of you, allowing a complete view of the rest of the campus and all the way to Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance. The research center houses one of the largest installations of structural glass in the United States. The offices and labs are all surrounded by glass. The place looks more like an art museum than a research facility until you actually enter the labs and see scientists using the equipment. Claire showed us all of the areas where she works to uncover the secrets of the human mind using fruit flies as the model. What a fabulous setting for doing research. It really is an amazing place.
After a tour of the research facility, we walked out the front of the Landscape Building to see the outdoor landscaping. There are ponds and plants intermixed with grasses and sculptures. One sculpture of particular interest was a 7 foot tall and 3 foot wide white granite sculpture called Curved Wings by Bertalan Andrasfalvy. He is just a little older than Kevin and Claire and is not only a sculptor, but also a researcher at Janelia. Curved Wings is a butterfly, not a fruit fly, and the small scale model he sculpted to present his idea to the institute sits in Kevin and Claire’s apartment. Bertalan is a friend and when they approached him about buying the small model, he offered it to them at a ridiculously low price. They had to talk him into taking more money for it! But what a special piece they will take with them when Claire leaves Janelia.
Another friend we met last night was Jason Osborne. He is with the Instrument & Design Fabrication Group at Janelia and makes cutting-edge neuroscience instruments for Janelia. In addition, Jason is also interested in paleontology and geology. He has taken Claire on various fossil hunts. Most finds are sent to museums, but Claire has collected some fossils on her own that are quite impressive. When she and Kevin are sailing the Chesapeake in the summers, they stop at beaches and Claire digs into the banks finding specimens of all types. She gave us a fern fossil in shale from a trip she and Kevin took with Jason to a Pennsylvania coal mine. Thank you, Claire . . . for the fossil and for the fabulous tour of Janelia. It was so special to finally see all of the things Claire has told us about for years now.
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| 160115 Day 86 Cape Cod, USA–Tour of Janelia Farm |
