Art Culture Politics
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Against the Grain
“The founding of the earliest agrarian societies and states in Mesopotamia occurred in the latest five percent of our history as a species on this planet. […] Measured by the roughly 200,000-year span of our species, then, the Anthropocene began only a few minutes ago.” And look what we don’t that tiny bit of our…
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On Denialism
Did you see Trump’s Coal Ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, say she believes “both sides” of the science on climate change? She and her husband, the Kentucky coal king, are major contributors to Trump’s campaign and inauguration. They also funnel money into his hotels, one of the major conduits of corruption flowing to the…
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Migratory Restlessness
Of course the Germans have a word for it: Zugunruhe. Migratory restlessness is best known in birds, but other animals have it as well. In spring and fall, these animals feel the need to get a move on. Hormones trigger it. Here’s Melville making an analogy in Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, published in 1852: “So…
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Sunday Thoughts
Last week I touched on Carl Safina essay about our moral obligation to the natural world. Since reading that piece, I’ve read Jedediah Purdy’s This Land is Our Land. In it, I find him citing Montaigne, who argued, in Purdy’s words, “that it was possible for a kind of humane and egalitarian affection to flow…
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Wild Remains
For some, the aesthetics of the native meadow will take some getting used to.
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Consider, if you will, the lobster
Andrew Selkirk, the inspiration for DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe, ate a lot of crawfish and spiny lobsters while marooned in the Juan Fernandez Islands. When he returned to Scotland, he took up lobstering. This is the kind of thing you learn in Richard J. King’s Lobster. This book is one of the Animal Series from Reaktion…
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Revenants
The Cumaean Sibyl spoke in oak leaves, which, when scattered by the wind, tended to result in the most ambiguous prophesies. In John Dryden’s bouncing-ball translation (Aeneid 6, 126-129), she says to Aeneas: The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view…
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Mustard Seed Shot
In his sparrow book, Rick Wright references “mustard seed shot.” Never having heard of this, I was most intrigued. Remember that early naturalists, ornithologists, and their agents collected birds — the skins — by shooting them. Audubon didn’t have a good day if he didn’t bag a hundred or more. But consider a songbird: there’s…
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Butterflies Are Free
Recognize this? This was a surprise at the recent Whitman exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum, where the image for the exhibit shows a famous photograph of the older WW holding a butterfly. Yup, one and the same. (Bigger on the M’s site…) And in that spirit: A full house, Monarchs high.
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The Case Against Honeybees
No other exploited farm worker has gotten the attention Apis mellifera has. Our urge to “save the bees” and “save the pollinators” has concentrated on the photogenic and familiar honeybee. They are, after all, a species with the publicity machinery of industrial farming behind them, and the romance of DIY rooftop farming. But we should…
Backyard and Beyond 