Art Culture Politics
-
Here Be Worms
A selection of J. R. R. Tolkien’s hand-drawn dragons from The Hobbit. The ones below are from the included map. The one above, not in my 30th printing of the 1966 edition, was added as a frontispiece to later editions.The collective noun for dragons is a desolation, unless you’re referring to the Asian versions, in…
-
Re: Rachel Carson
I finally read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in this handy new Library of America edition with an excellent introduction by editor Sandra Steingraber. Along with the chronology and notes, the volume puts Carson in a deep context of the burgeoning environmental activism of the 1950s, which was sparked in important ways by atmospheric nuclear testing.…
-
Bird Boxing
It’s a little late in the year for this, but I just found this book. It’s a very good place to start if you want to set up and maintain — stress on the maintain — bird homes for the next breeding season and the ones after that. Habitat, siting, building, monitoring, maintaining are all…
-
NYC Wildflower Week
Hear ye, hear ye! NYCWW will be celebrating it’s 10th anniversary May 11-20. There are lots of free events. Including one of my Listening Tours, a silent walk through Prospect Park at dawn to listen to the sounds of spring migration. Yes, that’s 5:30 a.m., but don’t let that scare you: you will be amazed…
-
Year of the Bird
This year marks the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which has rightfully been called one of the most powerful conservation laws ever. Audubon, BirdLife International, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, & National Geographic* have all teamed up to celebrate this 100th anniversary with the Year of the Bird. The MBTA makes it “illegal for…
-
The Amateurs
The root of the word amateur is the Latin for love. In our hyper-specialized world, “amateur” has become a put-down, which is a shame. The study of birds begun with amateurs. And it’s one of the few contemporary branches of science where amateurs can still regularly rub shoulders, or wings if you prefer, with professionals.…
-
Democracy
Abraham Lincoln, who left copious scraps of paper with jotted thoughts instead of a diary, wrote upon one of them: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” When I…
-
Listening
Last Sunday, I gave a sermon here in the church of nature that was on the critical side of polemic. Thank you for sticking through the rant. You’re good people. My complaint include the over-worked soundtrack of Planet Earth II. As somebody who has led “listening tours” (the mockery of politicians is intentional here) of…
-
Nasty Circle: What’s Old is New Again
I once had the privilege of touring the attic of the American Museum of Natural History. In the mid-90s there were still shelves upon shelves of model heads up there illustrating the supposed “racial” categories of a century ago. Back in that era of eugenics, an Italian was considered to be of a different race…
-
Tree Omnibus
The trees are singing. If only we would listen. Tolkien suggested it might be quite hard to hear them, since they sing on a whole different time scale. David George Haskell is listening with microphones and an acute biologist’s senses. The Songs of Trees was one of last year’s best naturalist books, beautifully written and…
Backyard and Beyond 