Art Culture Politics
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Gone Mammothin’
“Shall the great mammoth of the American forest leave his native element and plunge into water in a mad contest with the shark?” John Randolph (1773-1833) – a colorful, not to say histrionic, Congressman who brought his slaves and hunting dogs onto the floor of Congress, ate buckets of opium, and probably had a crush…
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Last of the Curlews?
The last, the very last, Passenger Pigeon died in captivity (1914). So did the last Carolina Parakeet (1918). The last Heath Hen, named Booming Ben, died in the preserve set aside for the species on Martha’s Vineyard (1932).But we don’t know where or when (or even if) the last Eskimo Curlew died. The species, Numenius…
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Systems of change
“[…] it is often not easy to assign insects to precise categories because there are so many species and their morphological, behavioral, and genetic differences frequently tend to overlap or intergrade. Often the best we can do is estimate degrees of relationship and/or distinctness and assign them to hypothetical groups as information becomes available. As…
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Arches
It does us good to remind ourselves that Prospect Park is a synthesis of the natural and the unnatural. The park is a highly engineered production, with drainage tiles laid underneath the Long Meadow, and fire hydrants in the middle of the Midwood, and the old reservoir built into Lookout Hill.Yesterday, the delightful Christopher Gray,…
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Old School
“The draining of the swamp lands is not a new idea. Such lands are not only unproductive of anything which can subserve any important purpose, but they are productive of numerous evils. Teeming with miasma, the home of mischievous and annoying insects they are blotches upon the otherwise fair face of nature. To tender them…
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A Very Bad Acid Trip
“…we have underestimated the overall risks and that the whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts, and that degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted.” State of the Ocean Report, 6.20.11Some of the excess carbon dioxide we so heedlessly pump into the atmosphere is absorbed by the…
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Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med And springþ þe wde nu, Sing cuccu! Awe bleteþ after lomb, Lhouþ after calue cu. Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ, Murie sing cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, wel þu singes cuccu; Ne swik þu nauer nu. Pes: Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu…
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Perfectly Said
We make our lives in a world not of our making. We feel in a world that does not feel. Yet it’s become a world in which our presence is felt. What attitude might confront such a world? An attitude of curiosity, for the complex world? An attitude of admiration, for the beautiful world? An…
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On Walton Ford
A few years ago when the Brooklyn Museum had its big Walton Ford show, The Tigers of Wrath, I was simply gob-stopped. The big canvases, which are both homage to and critique of John James Audubon and Western ways of looking at, and killing, nature, were amazing, filling me with awe. The paintings are epic,…
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Expeditionary
Well, we were rained, or, more specifically, thunderstorm-precautioned, out of our exploration of the threatened Four Sparrow Marsh, part of New York City Wildflower Week. We hope to re-schedule sometime later this spring or summer. In the meantime… The great Patrick Leigh Fermor (l’escargot des Carpathes) writes that his father, who was Director of the…
Backyard and Beyond 