Port Charlotte Homeschooling Science Fair

I heard about a science fair at the Port Charlotte Library organized by the Suncoast Home- schoolers. I thought that I had never participated in an actual science fair and that I would like to teach others about my fun experiences, so I decided to give it a try. I made a poster about the Calusa Indians who used to live in this area. Many people think that the Seminoles originally lived in this area, but they were actually pushed down from the north by the Americans. Anyway, I learned a lot while making this poster which examined everything about the Calusa's daily life from their tools to their art.

Part of my project was to make some reproductions of Calusa artifacts. I made a whelk shell hammer/axe which was a day to day tool of the Calusa. When it was worn out and chipped down from use, they would repurpose this tool as a drill. The whelk shell is unusual because it spirals in the opposite direction of other sea shells. Whelk was also used in spiritual ceremonies where a shell would be made into a drinking vessel for a special tea made from the Yaupon Holly which was very high in caffeine. Afterwards, the Calusa would punch a hole in the ceremonial vessel so that it would never be used again. They also used whelk horns for making loud sounds. Whelk vessels were also used for washing, storage, water collecting and soup drinking. There are probably many more used for the whelk than we know about, but these are a just couple of uses that are known to archaeologists.

I found a photograph of a beautiful pottery bowl while reading a book about Calusa artifacts. So I thought that I could make one just like theirs out of ceramic. I decided that a raku clay firing was the best technique possible. I doubt they had metal trash cans like the one that we used for the fire. I actually think the Calusa used open fire pits instead of kilns. My friends at The Open Studio helped me with my pottery work. I also made a shark’s tooth drill out of a fossilized sharks tooth, but the Calusa would have used a fresh tooth since it would be much less brittle. I made a Sabal palm fiber cord to secure the tooth in place. At science fair, I passed around all these objects for show and tell. I finished my presentation by giving the audience a lecture and it was a lot of fun! I also had a lot of fun looking at the others kids work as well. That’s it for now from the Nudibranch Network.

PS: Nudibranchs are beautiful marine molluscs that are related to land slugs, octopi and oysters. Await futher blogging on this subject….

A Day in the Life of the Calusa

By Sophie Barimo

INTRODUCTION

I have always been interested in archeology and history especially the people who lived before the Europeans came to the Americas. I wanted to know what it would be like to help dig on at an archeological site. I volunteered to the University of Florida dig on Pine Island in Lee County and learned a lot about the Calusa People.

METHODS

We took scoops of unsifted dirt and poured them onto the sifting table. Since the sifters had a mesh bottom, all the dirt fell out leaving chunks of cracked shells, pottery shards, bones and many other Calusa artifacts. When we shook the tables, a mushroom cloud of dust rose into the air and made everybody run away or get dusted out.

TOOLS

• PROJECTILE POINTS: Stingray spines, horseshoe crab tails, catfish spines, shark teeth, deer anther, bone point and chert

• FISH NETS: sabal palm leaf cord, with arc shell weights and cypress sap wood floats

• FISH TRAPS: sabal palm root

• FISH HOOKS: bone

• DRILLS, CUTTERS AND SCRAPERS: shark tooth

• HAMMERS, DIPPERS, AND AWLS: lighting whelk

• CELT AND ADZ: lightning whelk and queen conch

• ROPE AND WEAVING: sabal palm, century plant, mulberry, Spanish moss, cypress bark, green corn husk, bear grass

• CANOES: yellow pine and cypress tree trunks

ART

• Paint made from strangler fig latex mixed with crushed shells (white), charcoal (black), clay for yellow and brown, and marlberry made purple or blue depending on the pH

• Carved on shell

• Clay pipes, figurines, and decorative and ceremonial pottery

• Jewelry made from olive shells, clay beads and shark teeth

• Cooper, gold and silver ceremonial ornaments

FOOD

• FOUND IN CALUSA MIDDEN PILES (LANDFILL): Fish (drum, mullet and catfish other fish), crab claws, clams, mussels, conch, whelk, loggerhead turtle, ducks, land animals, squash, pumpkin, charred corn cobs, carbonized seeds, acorns and hickory nuts, coontie and cattail roots for starch, papaya, wild grapes, pine nuts, sea grape, prickly pear, sabal palm and palmetto palm hearts and berries.

• KITCHEN TOOLS: Mortar and pestle (wood), whelk ladles, and pottery vessels, pottery trays and pottery cooking pots

THANK YOU

Dr. Karen Walker and the staff of the Randell Research Center. Pat and David Townsend of the Randell who were very nice and trained me at the dig. My Dad, Dr. John Barimo and my Mom, Susan Barimo who helped me a lot. Thanks to Steve Schoff and Elizabeth G. for the photographs. And to Robin Brown who wrote the book Florida’s First People. Finally, thank you Suncoast Homeschoolers for organizing this event.

A Sail to Bimini

We have some friends named Jessica, Adam and Tallulah that we met in St. Thomas. They have lived on sail boats for a long time. Their daughter Tallulah is my friend and she is 4 years old. She has a lovey dovey cat named Velvet that lives on the boat with them. They are unbelievably nice people and fun to hang out with. We recently visited them a couple of times in St Petersburg, Florida before they bought their new boat. A couple months after they moved into their new boat named Callisto after a Greek myth telling their story about the Big Dipper. One Day they emailed us and invited us for a sail to Bimini. At first we did not know if the weather was going to cooperate but the more time we waited, the more certain it looked that we could sail.

Guess what? It finally happened, the weather cooperated! My Dad and I drove to Coconut Grove to meet them. I was so excited. It felt like 5 hours to drive there, but my Dad said it was only 3. We used to live in Coconut Grove just blocks away from where Callisto was moored. I soon learned how to live on a sailboat and which doorways to avoid so I wouldn’t hit my head on the solid teak door frames. Callisto is a 38 foot Hans Christen wooden mono hull. It is a well well laid out sailboat with a sailing dingy with oars and oar locks. She has two berths and a galley/kitchen/dining room/living room. I did not feel in the least bit claustrophobic. But any boat can shrink awfully quickly if you make a mess, so you needed to neaten your messes up right away. The sailboat was like a very large rocking ocean camper that can take you pretty much anywhere as long as the water is deep enough, or you have big trailer to haul it. The last thing to do before we got ready to go was provisioning, provisioning and more provisioning. This meant buying everything including solar panels , propane gas , fishing supplies , an overflowing cart of food and much much more. Once provisioning was finished, we had dinner, rowed back the boat, motored to Key Biscayne. I was so tired that I fell asleep while trolling, at least I did not let go of the fishing pole. As Jessica put it, we jammed about two weeks of work into 2 days.

The next morning, we sailed to Bimini after a breakfast of bagels from our favorite bagel shop in Coconut Grove. After a bit of cleaning on deck, Jessica lashed down all the cooking gear in the galley since we were expecting a fairly rocky ride. Thankfully we only had 2 to 3 foot waves. We left Florida behind but it was evening before we no longer saw the big buildings of Miami’s downtown. On our ride over, we fished unsuccessfully. It was not lucky for us but I imagine the fish were a lot happier. We did see some interesting birds though. There were many laughing gulls, cormorants, pelicans and a frigate bird near shore. Once in the Gulfstream we started seeing more pelagic birds like a Gloccus Wing Gull and a rare Parasitic Jaeger. We knew we were in the Gulfstream when the water went from light blue to a deep and very beautiful royal blue. My Dad presented a lecture on Oceans Currents and Coriollus Effect for Tallulah and me. In the middle of the Gulfstream, we launched a message in a decorated canning jar drift bottle. We are hoping it will reach Europe because of the Gulfstream and the North Atlantic Gyre’s strong current patterns. In total, the passage to the Bahamas took 12 hours and it was dark by the time we got to Bimini.

The next day we had to clear customs and we did all the things you have to do when you go into a new country. This usually includes a lot of waiting. We had to wait by a stinky power station and when the wind shifted in our direction, it was called “go inside the cabin”. While we waiting, I did catch a 14 inch bar jack on a lure but we let it go because they can have ciguatera toxins that can make you really sick if you eat them. That evening we launched a Japanese lantern that we had brought along. A Japanese lantern is pretty much a paper bag with a candle in the bottom that floats up, up and away when it the air inside is heated up and becomes lighter. It is sort of like a mini hot air balloon. It almost crashed into the water but luckily caught an updraft and floated away. It was such a bright yellow that it looked like a sun in the evening sky. We watched it as it drifted away into the evening sky.

On the second day, we went to Gunn Caye which is south of Bimini. Gunn Caye is a beautiful natural island with white sandy beaches and the ruins of an abandoned building. We anchored the boat in between two islands where the water was a remarkable shade of blue but could not rival the color of the Gulfstream. We rowed ashore and we played on the sandy beaches. I found the biggest patch of sailor’s salad (beach purselane) ever. I laid down in the middle of that patch and immediately started munching away. Sailor’s salad used to be eaten by the sailor’s because it apparently helped prevent scurvy and this

succulent plant is very common on the beaches of Florida and the Caribbean. I then went snorkeling with my Dad. At first, all we saw were empty conch shells. Unfortunately all the conch in that areas and been gunned down by overharvesting. You could tell they were harvest by people because the shells were cracked on top. However, there were two large sting rays that came over and checked us out while we were sitting in the water. They must have expected food because they were very curious and not aggressive, and were bumping up against us. I then went off and collected some little land hermit crabs for Tallulah to play with. She had had a bad experience with hermit crabs in Mexico but she soon got over her fear of the pinching claws and she had a lot of fun making crab houses in the sand. Then my Dad came up with a really gargantuan hermit crab and showed it off. It must have been the size of my arm. It had the sort of claws that said don’t put your fingers here or you might lose it or get a nasty scar. The sun began to set, so we rowed back to Callisto for the night. I tried to sleep on the deck that night but woke up all wet from the rain.

On our last day in Bimini, Adam and Jessica rowed us up to the Bimini marina with all of our luggage. The dingy was pretty low in the water from all the weight but we made it. After we had really good fish and chips for lunch, we took a taxi to the airport and a couple of hours later we flew on a little buzzy plane to Ft Lauderdale. As we flew back, I marveled at how the 12 hour sailing trip was covered by airplane in less than a half hour and I thought about my trip. I had been on a sailboat trip before, but I had never been out of the sight of land or on an overnight trip before. I didn’t think it was scary or anything, I just had a good time. I thought about how I’d love to live on a sailboat.

Then the plane landed with a bump and the adventure was almost over We did not go directly through a terminal building, but got out of the plane down a pair of metal steps on wheels. A friend of our named Allan came and picked up. We stayed the night at their house, and the next day we drove back to Englewood. I was so happy to see my Mom and hopefully she will come on our next sailing trip. So that was our Bimini sailing adventure. See you next time on the Nudibranch Network.

Archeology Dig

I have always been interested in archeology and history especially the people who lived before the Europeans came to the Americas. I experienced the Mayan culture and their ancient pyramids while we were living in Belize. When we were going across country, we visited the Effigy Mounds in Iowa which were build by the Mississippian Culture about 1000 years ago. Last summer we visited the Florida Natural History Museum in Gainesville. We learned about the history of the Calusa people and saw many of their artifacts. There was a woodpecker carving that caught my imagination. I also wondered what it would be like to be an archeologist.

I wanted to know what it would be like to help dig on at an archeological site. The museum in Gainesville had a dig that people could help out with on Pine Island. It’s only about 20 miles from our house as the bird flies but unfortunately cars can’t swim across the bay, so we had to go the long way around Charlotte Harbor which took about an hour and a half. Pine Island has a very artsy and crafsy village, and a lot of mangrove trees. There was only one stop sign that we saw on the whole tranquil island.

We arrived at the parking lot of the Randell Museum fairly early in the morning. We walked into their main office which was an old house that was destroyed by Hurricane Charley and had been recently renovated. The house had pine paneling and flooring which fits with the name of the island quite well. We met some very nice people and about five minutes later, I was sifting away. There were two huge pile of dirt. One had already been sifted through and the other had not. We took scoops of unsifted dirt and poured them onto the sifting table. Since the sifters had a mesh bottom, all the dirt fell out leaving chunks of cracked shells, pottery shards, bones and many other Calusa artifacts. When we shook the tables, a mushroom cloud of dust rose into the air and made everybody run away or get dusted out.

I helped a really nice lady named Pat and we found some bones. These bones were probably from a fish or small mammal. We put them in a collection tray for cleaning and sorting. Next, I found an otolith which is the hearing bone of a fish. I identified that otolith to be from a catfish because of its shape. The principle of an otolith is that when sound vibrations travel through the water and hit the otolith, it vibrates inside a nerve lined sac of tissue. The nerves around the otolith then sends a signal to the brain which the fish senses as a sound. As I sifted some more, I found some pottery shards which were two different colors. There was terra cotta color clay and dark brown color clay. The Calusa had to trade to get the terra cotta color clay which was a better quality. I found a shark tooth tool which is apparently pretty uncommon at this site. My Dad also found a shark tooth.

The find of the day was a carved piece of either deer bone or shell that confused everybody before we realized what it was. Some people thought it was plastic, but I took a piece of shell and tapped it, and I didn’t think it sounded like plastic at all. Later we found out that it was a rattlesnake carving and it was the first piece of art found on the site which has been worked since 2006. The rattlesnake carving probably came from the Mississippian Culture and had been traded from as far away as Ohio which has its own Serpent Mound. This is not a big surprise since both cultures built large mounds. All and all, we spent about 5 hours of cleaning, sorting, shoveling, shaking, sieving, coughing from dust, and discarding the waste shells and rocks.

We then explored the nearby Calusa mounds and walked all over the site. We found a nice napping area because of the shards of chert. There were some trails that led us up the mounds which had a good view of the bay and the other mounds. There was a little similarity to the Mayan pyramids but the mounds were a little less grand. I was wondering what it would be like to be a Calusa before the Spanish invaded. I thought it was really cool to do archeology and I want to do it again. That’s all for now from the Nudibranch Network.

Keeping Worms in the Tropics

Why should I keep worms? We started our worm keeping after a visit to Echo Farms in Ft Myers, FL. We took workshops about worm keeping and learned enough to know to get started. Earth worms recycle food waste into good vermicompost and save energy and money. They produce good garden manure which provides house plants and garden with nutrients and good bacteria. Soils in the tropics tend to be sandy and low in nutrients, so worms will help you with this. Worms are good bait for freshwater fishing, so you can also save some money. This blog is a step by step guide for the worm keeper.

Worm Housing

Step 1. What things do you need to make a worm bin? You need at least two containers such as 5 gallon buckets or plastic totes which are at least 12 inches deep. You also need one lid. They must be opaque to keep out the sun. You will also need a drill with 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch drill bits. All these can be purchased at a hardware store.

Step 2. Drill holes in the sides of one bucket with the 1/8 inch drill bit and drill holes on the bottom with the 1/4 inch drill bit. Drill all holes about an inch apart. These holes help let fresh air in and the old air out. This is important so that the worm compost does not turn anaerobic. The holes on the bottom allow moisture or leachate to drain out. The leachate can be used as liquid fertilizer. Now stack the buckets and put the bucket with the holes onto of the bucket with no holes. Make sure not to drill holes in the lid to keep the worms from drying out.

Moving In

Step 3. Now that the house is built it is worm time. Make sure you buy red wiggles since other worms like night crawlers will burrow deep. When you are buying the worms, make sure to buy your worms from a local supplier because worms from Maine might not acclimate well to the tropics. You might have friends with an established worm bin who will share with you. We got some from our friends Greg and Evelyn from The Open Studio.

Step 4. Now your worms need bedding! Bedding can be made from coconut husk, shredded newspaper or other paper with soy based ink, and corrugated cardboard. Do not use shiny magazine paper! Make sure paper is shredded in strips. Bedding should be as wet as a wrung sponge but not soggy. Fill container with at least a few inches of this bedding. Also add a couple of sand or dirt for the worms.

Step 5. What to feed the worms? Here are some worm feeding basics with some do’s and don’ts. Worms love most kitchen and plant waste from cantaloupes to pumpkins to organic yard waste. They also love coffee grounds and tea bags but leave out the staples. Now here are some of the no no’s. Worms don’t like too much citrus because they are too acidic. If you give the worms too much citrus give them crushed egg shells to balance the pH back. Avoid meat, dairy, hot peppers, spicy food, onions and garlic. A pound of worms can eat a half a pound of kitchen waste per 24 hours.

General care

Keep your bin in your porch, garage or lanai so you have an overhang. This keeps out direct sunlight and rain. Make sure to keep worm food and compost moist but not soaking. When food is put in the worm bin, make sure to cover it with bedding. Add new bedding when worms have eaten in all. This is an important food for them since worms need lots of carbon. Also keep an eye on your leachate because worms do not like to be soaked. Keep out all fire ants, centipedes and maggots! Please give me feedback on how your worm bins are doing. Vermiculture is a very good thing to help the environment. See you next time on the Nudibranch Network.

Horst's Treasure Trove

Horst Kohlem is an amazing free form artist from Germany and we are good friends with him and his wonderful family. When we were in Miami Beach, FL a couple of months ago, and we stayed a few days at his art treasure trove of a home. His house is filled with excellent paintings and amazing mixed media sculptures of his own doing.

Horst’s paintings have a beautiful mix of colors and patterns. He paints images of bridges and buildings that I wouldn’t think to do. His paintings have interesting textures and layering. He builds up the paint so it is three dimensional. I think he applies the paint with drizzles and drops and adds tree leaves with makes unique textures. However, his secret recipe is unknown. His work is very large and can be up to 5 feet wide and tall.

Horst’s sculptures can be very small or very large; some were even bigger than me. They are made out of recycled metals which usually come from airplanes and other machines. These metal pieces can be welded together and are sometimes mixed with stones such as marble to make interesting patterns. I have photos of some of the amazing Horstean sculptures and paintings below. The big harp I’m standing next to was actually played in an orchestra performance.

We had a gynormously good time visiting with Horst and his wife Jacqueline. I thought it was really cool to have another artist to talk to. If you ever need some inspiring art, Horst sells his work in galleries and would be happy to talk to you. See you next time on the Nudebranch Network. I was on vacation but now I’m back...