Before today’s Eagles football game, the NFL brought in a special guest to fly around the stadium. Turns out that Challenger the eagle is actually a pretty big celebrity in the sports world. Here is an article about him.
“High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shake the bog with its nearness, but without yet disclosing whence it comes. At last a glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of the sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.” – Aldo Leopold, Marshland Elegy
Some photos from Cosumnes Preserve, CA:
The other morning, I was walking through puddles, left behind by the recent rainfall, and came across this scene. I just stood there and laughed. I made a point to position myself directly in front of a group of plant ops. workers, put down my coffee and backpack in an exaggerated fashion and take this picture.
Watering the Grass
I’ve been thrilled about the recent developments in sustainability at Lafayette (sustainability officer, Environmental Studies/Science room, connected communities module, etc.), but there is still a disjoint between words and actions. This is why we need to point out things like this.
Dave and Andy reiterated that we should post more campus observations, and I was planning to do so, but the moment I saw this scene I realized why that is so important. We need to continue to take pictures of unsustainable practices. We must still show up to sustainability committee meetings (though they are at the same time as this class 🙁 ). We must report everything we see that needs to change. We’ve made really fantastic strides and have accomplished a TON, but that does not mean we can take our foot off the gas pedal. As an activist of any kind, you have to know your work is never finished and victories are meant to be celebrated and used to propel your movement forward. Let images like this anger you and empower you at the same time. Shaking your head and moving on with your day creates no progress.
A little while ago I got lunchables as a late night snack. I didn’t realize it when I was purchasing the Lunchables, but when I sat down to eat I realized there was a platypus on the front of the box. I didn’t think too much of it until I opened the box and realized there was a little cartoon on the inside of a platypus and a rabbit sharing a pun. Seeing this reminded me of Sterba’s book, Nature Wars.
In the bear chapter, as well as a few other chapters, Sterba warns against this type of anthropomorphism. He explains how it causes a false relationship with animals which can be dangerous. Sterba states, “Children grow up surrounded by images of wild animals presented as furry or feathery little people like them. We learn from our pets how some animals live and then mistakenly project that knowledge onto wild creatures living a much different reality . . . Today’s denatured adults often continue to see bears and other wilds animals the way they did as children without the corrective lens of different experience” (Sterba 184-185). Although I do not believe a rabbit or platypus will cause any true harm to a child or adult, the idea still holds. A food intended for children has images of animals acting like humans. These images will, most likely, stick with children throughout their life without an experience teaching them otherwise.
Wednesday, when the Simpson’s clip was being showed, I was reminded of a clip from an episode of That 70’s Show. In the episode a group of guys go hunting. Towards the end of the episode Eric ends up in a blind alone with his father, Red, and is given the opportunity to shoot a “ten point” buck. Eric balks at the opportunity and misses the shot, and for the remainder of the time in the blind Red is giving Eric a hard time.
This clip is pretty long, and bad quality but it is all I could find of the episode. If you skip to 14:25 and watch until approximately 15:00 you’ll see Red’s reaction to finding out that Eric missed the shot on purpose. The reason I thought of this clip was because, and attached it even though the quality is kind of shitty, is because I thought it was an interesting balance to the clip from the Simpson’s. Although there is an underlying message that relates being able to fire a gun to masculinity, it shows Red respecting his sons desire to not want to kill the buck. For those unfamiliar with the show, Red’s character is considered more of a manly man. This fact, coupled with him accepting his son’s lack of desire to hunt, shows a different idea on hunting than Homer Simpson. Red is more concerned with his son being a good shot than hunting making him a man.
This is a film that I first saw in Andy’s Environment and Film class last year. It left a very lasting impression on me, especially as an EVST student. This film has no dialogue but it doesn’t need it. The way the information is conveyed is very different, using time-lapse and slow motion, but the message is even stronger. The beginning of the film is just of nature (i.e the ocean, wildlife, etc), then it shows images of human’s impact on the land. Towards the end we see city life and people in the city. The last scene brought me to tears, and I hope you get the chance to see the entire film at some point because it can be an enlightening, angering, and enjoyable film all at the same time.
Our discussion of the night sky in class today made me think of a photography exhibit from Thierry Cohen that a friend showed me last year. It is a photo series that imagines cities from around the world without any streetlights, under the night sky. The artist visited nine cities and took photos of them during the day. He then visited spots on the same longitude that had little to no light pollution and took photos of the night sky. For instance, the skies above Shanghai are actually in Western Sahara and Paris is illuminated by the stars over Montana at locations on the same longitude. Here are a few of the striking images, let me know what you think!
SERIE VILLES ETEINTES
Anthropocentric spread of invasive pathogens in wildlife and domestic animal populations, so-called pathogen pollution, poses substantial threats to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity and is of major concern in conservation efforts (Winifred F. Frick et al. 679).
This statement from the introduction of the bat article truly resonates with me because I recently researched amphibians of the tropical Andes, which has the most amphibians in the world of any biodiversity hotspot and the main cause of there extinction is human introduced pathogens and viruses. Additionally, they are also being effected by anthropocentric climate change another human induced problem that may extinct 70-80% of all amphibian species within the next 50 years. The real questions now is can they be conserved because human interference in these hotspot areas is only increasing and climate change seems to have only begun rearing its true face.
Last class we discussed the sandhill crane because of its long history, so during the Dillard reading I was happy to see a section on monarch butterflies. Their history is noted in this quote from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Each successive swarm repeats this mysterious dogleg movement, year after year. Entomologists actually think that the butterflies might be “remembering” the position of a long-gone, looming glacier.” (258)
I am convinced that butterflies, let alone most species, can see and feel a history that we cannot. The monarchs and cranes could easily achieve a Story of Place assignment.
The pond metaphors-too great to note all (seasons, man, gun firer), but here is a passage that I enjoyed from Spring in Walden: “The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun’s rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours.” (326)
“We need the tonic of wildness,-to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk , and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature… We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast” (344)
This passage discusses the desire for humans to be in Nature and how the coming of Spring reminds each of us of that desire. After dead and bleak winters we want to hear the chirping of birds and to be outside smelling that unique smell of Spring. We want to see the natural systems at play like “the vulture feeding on the carrion” because it reminds us that there is still a Nature out there. I think that this desire comes from our deep connection to the land. Like I just talked about in my last post- there are a lot of parts of humans that are more like things found in Nature than we think there are. We are so closely related to this Earth and that is why we desire to be a part of it.
However, we don’t want too much of Nature and like to think of the idea that parts of it are untouched by man. Humans think this way because though there are small parts of us that relate to Nature- we understand that we are so different from it as well. We enjoy pondering the mysteries of the natural world that we will never comprehend and want just that piece of Nature to stay untouched and unfathomable.