None of the research blogging posts in my queue are quite ready yet, so it’s time for another update on the weird world of Wesorts. If you’re a Piscataway Indian reading that sentence, please don’t take offense - I’m talking about Wesort sailboats here, for the benefit of the six people in the world who’ve heard of them. And if you have absolutely no idea what any of this is about, hang on, because it’s going to get weirder.

Wayne sent this note through the contact form: I sailed a Wesort my family owned back in the 70’s. I was a sloop rigged sailing rowboat designed and built locally in the Severn River region during the 60’s. Mine had the number 127, but I’m not sure how many were made. It was made of plywood with a flat bottom and wooden mast with a closet dowel for a boom. It was rather slow, but since it was a sloop it gave a more complete sailing experience than the faster and smaller Penquins that used to race together in Severn regattas.

I’ve started a new blog. I’ll still be blogging here as before, so if you enjoy alandove.com you’ll still be able to (and if you loathe alandove.com, well, what are you doing here)? The new site follows the story of Walter and Ina, who were both born in rural Southern towns just before the turn of the 20th century. Walter is from Mississippi, Ina is from Texas. The story opens at the beginning of the Great War, with Walter shipping out for France with an Army aviation squadron and Ina attending college in Texas and worrying about the boys “over there.

Boatbuilders come and go, so it’s no surprise that virtually all of the vessels in my earliest sailing memories are now out of production. Most of them, though, survive in boatyards and have fan clubs online, so information about them is never more than a Google search away. Not so the Wesort. Before I was even big enough to hold a tiller, I remember my father teaching older kids how to sail at Indian Landing Boat Club on the upper reaches of the Severn River.

A local friend just contacted me to ask who takes care of our leaf removal, so I told her: nobody. Ever since moving to the suburbs, I’ve had to take care of a lawn, and one of the first shortcuts I discovered was the little-known option of mulching the annual deluge of leaves. I just keep mowing the lawn every two weeks until the trees seem to have finished shedding, and let the leaf shreds decompose into the turf.

Everyone knows how to determine the age of a tree that’s just been cut down: count the rings. But did you know that the same general strategy can be used to track ancient weather patterns, explain the rise and fall of great empires, and construct detailed histories of long-vanished societies that left no written records? I do now, thanks to Tree Story, Valerie Trouet’s well-written and engaging dive into the fascinating science of dendrochronology.