During our discussion of diary of a citizen scientist on Wednesday, someone mentioned that they appreciated Russell’s enthusiasm for sharing her passion over beetles. After reading more of the book, that thought really stuck with me.

To put it bluntly, I am not a big fan of the book. Reading chapter after chapter about insects isn’t the most exciting thing, although I’m trying to enjoy it. However, I too appreciate Russell’s relentless passion for her little niche of nature.

Reading this book has got me thinking, do people think my love for nature is boring? Once more, this thought reenforces the idea that we all perceive nature differently. While I might not be enthralled by the discovery of new beetle species, I think it’s awesome that Russell can find excitement in something so different from the natural things that I find excitement in. And yet, our very diverse interests still fall under the same category of nature.

Along similar lines, I thought it was cool to hear everybody’s different observations of Sullivan Park. While we all drifted off to sit in different directions, we were all concentrated in a relatively small and aesthetically homogenous area. Yet we all saw different things and connected different trains of thought. It was very cool.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/investigation-finds-exxon-ignored-its-own-early-climate-change-warnings/

Very interesting article. Check it out

Proud Mary, Rolling down the river. I figured I’d jump in on the river song posts while they were still relevant. The song I’m discussing is the Credence Clearwater Revival classic, Proud Mary.

The catchy guitar licks and John Fogerty’s unique vocals talks about getting away from the everyday bustle and taking a step back to slow down, and in this case, take a ride on the river boat Proud Mary.

Big Wheels keep on turning

Proud Mary Keep on burning,

Rolling on the River

The simple point of the song can be seen as message to take the time to step back and appreciate what there is around us. The Proud Mary, and the river for that matter, is going to keep on rolling.

The song reminds me a little of Living Like Weasels, when the lyrics talk about leaving a job in the city and not having seen the good side of it until he left for the river. The song drives home a point that you shouldn’t be wasting your time on something that doesn’t make you happy. The song suggests you should find your meaning in life and in this case the river is the calling. It’s going to keep moving forward and if you aren’t happy with where you are, get on the river and move forward with your life.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/wyoming_law_against_data_collection_protecting_ranchers_by_ignoring_the.html

My google search was “critique’s of citizen science.” I hypothesized that some professional scientists may have issues with the trustworthiness of numbers gathered by people who have nothing to lose, no tenure to gain, or no reputation to build. However, I discovered something much more frustrating and disappointing: Wyoming has made it illegal for anyone to “collect resource data” from any federal, state, or privately owned land with the intention of sharing it with the state or federal government.

The article further explains the implications of this law. It makes photography of natural spaces illegal, it makes pointing out an environmental disaster illegal, and it makes citizen science illegal. The article also quickly points to the E. coli outbreak in the water in many places in Wyoming as the reason for this law. It mentions that the abundance of E. coli is from ranching, a politically powerful industry in the state.

I routinely point to money in politics as the number one thing that needs to change to allow environmentally minded legislation take place. Big-ag lobbying within states has enacted laws such as this one in Wyoming, Ag-gag laws which make it a crime to video or photograph the inside of a factory farming operation, and has prevented California from enforcing water restrictions on Agriculture, the biggest water consumer in the state. Many people don’t realize how much of a chokehold industrial farming has on this country due to the fact that they can get these seemingly small laws passed within states without many people noticing.

If we don’t allow citizens to have a voice when it comes to the cleanliness of their own land, we’ve surely eliminated democracy. Furthermore, if a citizen cannot ask their government for help when their land has been ruined, or their water polluted, we’ve now allowed the interests of a few to jeopardize the health and happiness of the majority over generations. We cannot allow states to enact laws which only shove problems under the rug rather than addressing them.

Some people may look at the abandoned houses of Elkmont, Tennessee and see a classic example of human waste and excess. These perfectly functioning houses built with natural resources such as logs cut down from the local forest have been abandoned. They are no longer hospitable in the slightest, and people who may have lived there will now be using additional resources to build new houses in a new location. Instead of having natural forest there is now a ghost town serving no purpose other than entertaining tourists.

I actually found the abandoned houses beautiful and reassuring.

The houses look as though they are being swallowed back into the forest. The image comforted and reassured me because it made me confident of the fact that nature and wilderness would recover, irregardless of what humans do to the planet. There is a lot of worry with climate change that humans are going to permanently alter the planet and ruin it. This picture reminded me that while climate change could potentially make this planet inhospitable towards humans, nature will always adapt and survive. Nature will always reclaim its land.

While reading Diary of a Citizen Scientist I remember at one point I was reading a description of the beetles and their activity and I was like “wow, she is really anthropomorphizing these beetles”. Coincidentally enough, right after I having this thought I read the following paragraph, “Of course, this is shameless anthropomorphization, ascribing human qualities to non-human things. And I do feel a little ashamed, out of habit and cultural training. In truth, though, I am no longer convinced that ascribing human qualities to nonhuman things is all that bad. Maybe we don’t ascribe them enough” (Russell 39).

I had this thought because I have always learned anthropomorphizing is not a great thing to do. However, I cannot seem to remember the justifications behind why. I remember this has been mentioned in various discussions, but I do not know if we discussed exactly why it is a bad thing. Russell calling this idea into question makes me consider rethinking it. Out of curiosity I went looking for why the use of anthropomorphizing may be frowned upon or why it may be an acceptable thing to do:

“The stated enemy is the assumption that their cognitive processes mirror our own complicated mental analyses, instead of the preferred notion that lower species are purer examples of stimulus/response behaviors. If we were to assume that they’re like us in that regard, objective scientific findings might be muddled by dreaded subjectivity.”
http://thebark.com/content/real-problem-anthropomorphism

“We are simply applying things we’re familiar with, like emotions, to these things to help us understand our surroundings. It’s a lot easier to explain a prancing goat as being “happy” than it is to study the behavior further and determine that the dance is part of a mating ritual. Anthropomorphizing is the point at which human curiosity meets human laziness.”
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/animals-happy1.htm

“Many researchers now recognize that we must be anthropomorphic when we discuss animal emotions but that if we do it carefully, what I call biocentric anthropomoprhism, we can still give due consideration to the animals’ point of view.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200906/anthropomorphic-double-talk-can-animals-be-happy-not-unhappy-no

“Anthropomorphism in and of itself is neither good nor bad. How it is used by humans to refer to actions or motivations of non-human animals, however, may range from the ridiculous to injurious. What follows are examples of classical vs. critical anthropomorphism (being the acceptable, reasonable type)”.
http://www.anapsid.org/ethology.html

From my research it would seem that some believe it is a bad thing as when we anthropomorphize we assume the thing of focus has the same emotions and/or cognitive ability, while others find it to be acceptable if used properly. I am curious to hear what others in the class and our Professors think about this concept of anthropomorphization? Is it a bad thing, and if so why do you think so? If it might not be such a bad thing, why do you think that?

During our alone time in Sullivan Park today I realized I seem to experience nature in a childlike way. I would see, hear, smell, or touch something and my thoughts revolved around “ooh”, “ahh”, “what”, “why”, and “how”. I was so curious about this and that, jumping from thing to thing like a five year old in a candy store. In fact after the experience I kept thinking about how I was pretty much just playing a game of I-Spy with the things around me. So I thought I might share a few of my I-Spy finds with you all:

I suppose I’m a little slow to the game here but after a much needed 2+ hour phone call with my wonderful mama (broken phone leaves little time or possibility for such extended moments of contact) I have some new thoughts on our meander down the river on Saturday. Much like what a lot of other people, namely Terry, said about the experience being akin to a childhood experience, I found that many of the feelings I recognized physically brought me back to certain moments of my youth. My mom and I spent a good chunk of time today wondering about what children a generation from now will be like and how much different the population’s general activity level is now from how it was in her time or before. We figured in how much time people spend in their cars and offices and homes and how appliances lessen the simple physical tasks of laundry and dishwashing and essentially anything that can be made more efficient with a touch of a button.

She was fortunate enough to grow up in an active family that cherished the outdoors- her father ran a summer camp in his time between teaching high school history, and she and her sisters rode and cared for horses throughout their preteen and teen years. In part because of this, and in part because of my birth occurring riggghhhttt before the technological revolution of the youth, she was able to instill in my sister and me a sense of belonging in nature. She nurtured our interests in snakes and snails and stifled our interests in television. I think it is partly because of this that I so appreciate being able to be alone in the nature that I love.

I think that is part of why I was apprehensive about taking on the Delaware in the company of so many people. To my surprise, I was actually most ruffled up about Ian and Katie being there. It felt like we were all going in on this excursion together and that they weren’t a part of it so somehow their presence would lessen the experience. I was excited to do something I have always loved doing but I was nervous about what it would feel like, with these people, in this setting, in this way. To my pleasant surprise, it was much more freeing than I anticipated. In fact, though I definitely spent the majority of my time pulling forward or to the outsides to be able to kind of do my own thing and see things for myself, some of my favorite parts of the journey were when we were all tethered together and drifting. There was something about that that was at once relaxing and engaging, and it was a new perspective on an encounter with nature for me that I would be interested in repeating.

I know at some point, Joe, Erik and I started to imagine what the camping trip will be like. It was once we had left for the second “half” of the excursion and we were at the front of the group where the water was clear and flat save for the occasional ripples and rocks. The reflection of the trees made it all seem so much fuller, and the frequency of visible housing diminished. With the large hills/small mountains in front of us, it was easy to begin to picture what it might be like out there in the Catskills. I think I will again begin to wonder about the size of the group and the number of the people while we are hiking and such, but I am looking forward to what I now expect to be more pleasant surprises.