So it is no secret to anyone that I live in New Hampshire. As such I have been up North in this beautiful homeland of mine for break. However, it has been a confusing visit home due in part to the fact that it is SO warm here right now! Normally by the end of November there is snow on the ground, and if there isn’t snow, there’s at least a considerable amount of biting wind and frosted plants. But we have none of that. Last night I sat beside an outdoor fire with a group of friends in thin leggings and a flannel with a vest and I was very comfortable. This time last year we tried to do the same and I was bundled in layers with a blanket and we had to go inside early because it was so cold. We were all mystified by the warmth (it was quite literally 65 degrees on Friday…….) already when my friend Zac’s dad came outside to say hello and noted that the TCU vs. Baylor football game was being played in 30 degree rainy weather. In Dallas.

It made the group of us, who are not – other than me – necessarily likely to consider environmental conditions, wonder about how that could be normal. Obviously it isn’t normal, but how will people continue to react to these changes of climate? If we are to be exploring the “cultures of nature” then what exactly is the “culture of weather”? I would say cold winters and snow on the ground (and pretending to enjoy and be tough about both of those things) are integral to the New Hampshire spirit and Northern character. Likewise I would imagine people from Texas appreciate the warmth they get to hold onto into the “winter” months. How would a long term change- if that is what is to come- impact these attitudes and cultures?

The story begins with a Jacob Marburger, a 19 year old Washington College student, who was the victim of a prank on campus. Other students had put a garbage full of water outside of his dorm room so that when he opened the door it killed into his room. Two days later Marburger, who was a year into antique gun collecting, brandished an unloaded gun in front of other students while he was intoxicated. Two weeks later he was suspended from the school and upon returning after his suspension he was kicked out of his fraternity and had to resign from student government.

Jacob was reported missing when he left campus early Sunday, November 15th, and drove to his home in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. He arrived at home at 3am that Monday but left shortly after at 4 am and took a rifle case with him. His pinged phone then spotted him at a Walmart at 7 am on the 16th in Hamburg, PA. At the Wal-Mart, which is 15 minutes away from Hawk Mountain, he bought five rounds of ammunition. Jacob Marburger was found dead after a self inflicted gunshot wound in his car at a picnic area at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.

This story was brought to my attention by my father last night when he asked me how our trip went to Hawk Mountain went. He mentioned this story and I figured I would look it up. I found this opening paragraph by NBC 10 Philadelphia especially interesting: 

“Jacob Marberger picked a peaceful place to die. The Washington College student whose disappearance prompted his school to shut down for two weeks shot himself in the head at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a natural area with beautiful vistas and landscape, authorities said. The famous terrain, which sits alongside the Appalachian Trial in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is the world’s first refuge for birds of prey.”

I wondered why they went so in depth about Hawk Mountain before telling the story of why Marberger may have committed suicide. But I also wondered why Marberger chose Hawk Mountain as his last place to be alive.

From reading a few reports on what happened it seems as though bullying played a large role in Jacob’s death, including the involvement of the anonymous posting app Yik-Yak. It is horrific to think that bullying could have brought this student to commit suicide but I also can’t help but think that access to guns played a role in this suicide as well. Visiting Cabela’s opened my eyes to the issue of access to firearms and had I never visited I may have looked at this story as solely a result of bullying. But now I wonder if Jacob had not been allowed to purchase firearms or at least not purchase bullets so easily at a Walmart, maybe there would have been more time to stop him. Granted owning a gun didn’t make Jacob feel the way he did and bullying is the cause here but maybe the access to firearms is making things worse as thoughts of suicide can quickly become a reality for some.

Here are the two articles that I looked at incase you would like to read more:

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Jacob-Marberger-Suicide-Washington-College-Hawk-Mountain-Cheltenham-352949961.html

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Jacob-Margerger-Death-Self-Inflicted-Gunshot-Wound-352746651.html

I wanted to follow up on the show I mentioned last week in class. Here are a few clips of the show “The Last Alaskans”. This show gives us an insight into the lives of those living in “the final frontier” the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee where they live throughout the winter.   I think that this show is really fascinating and I recommend that you take a look!

http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/the-last-alaskans/videos/the-last-alaskans-video-highlights/

Before transcribing any passages, I would first like to direct your attention to the environmental Kuznets curve:

Environmental Kuznets Curve

For those who are not familiar, this is essentially a hypothesis that as per capita income increases for the first time, environmental degradation also increases. Per capita income will then hit a turning point (most studies put that at about $8000/yr) where society will decide that they want a cleaner environment and will begin to allocate money to be more environmentally conscious and friendly. Notice how this is almost the exact same thing as the biblical narrative of (1) fall, (2) desert, (3) garden?

“Using science, technology, and biblical imagery, they changed first the easter wilderness and then the western deserts into cultivated gardens. Sanctioned by the Genesis origin story, they subdued the “wilderness,” replenished the earth, and appropriated Indian homelands as free lands for settlement. Mercantile capitalism cast America as the site of natural resources, Africa as the source of enslaved labor, and Europe as the locale of resource management” (140). 

“The narrative of frontier expansion is a story of male energy subduing female nature, taming the wild, plowing the land, re-creating the garden lost by Eve. American males lived the frontier myth in their everyday lives, making the land safe for capitalism and commodity production, Once tamed by men, the land was safe for women. To civilize was to bring the land out of a state of savagery and barbarism into a state of refinement and enlightenment. This state of domestication, of civility, is symbolized by woman and “womanlike” man” (147). 

“Capitalism mystifies by converting living nature into dead matter and by changing inert metals into living money. To the capitalist puppeteers, nature is a doll-like puppet controlled by the strings of wheat trade that changes money into interest-earning capital. Male minds calculate the motions that control the inert matter below” (Merchant 152).

This description on how we capitalize on the natural world struck me while reading this piece. The idea that we are puppeteers and nature is the puppet emphasizes how we manipulate nature for our benefit.

“Nor are nature and culture, women and men, binary opposites with universal or essential meanings. Nature, wilderness, and civilization are socially constructed concepts that change over time and serve as stage settings in the progressive narrative. So too are the concepts of male and female and the roles that men and women play on the stage of history. The authors of such powerful narratives as laissez-faire capitalism, mechanistic science, manifest destiny, and the frontier story are usually privileged elites with access to power and patronage. Their words are read by persons of power who add the new stories to the older biblical story. As such the books become the library of Western culture. The library, in turn, functions as ideology when ordinary people read, listen to, internalize, and act out the stories told by their elders-the ministers, the entrepreneurs, newspaper editors, and professors who teach and socialize the young” (Merchant 153).

I thought this commentary on where the thoughts and ideas we listen to and abide by come from was very interesting, and that these people of power created the “library of Western culture”.

Environmentalism, like feminism, reverses the plot of the recovery narrative, seeing history as a slow decline, not a progressive movement that has made the desert blossom as the rose. The recovery story is false; an original garden has become a degraded desert. Pristine nature, not innocent man, has fallen. The decline of Eden was slow, rather than a precipitous lasidarian moment as in the Adam and Eve origin story” (Merchant 155).

This passage stood out to me as it explained modern day environmentalism as compared to the “recovery” narrative. While in the past humanity may have seen the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to be the fall, environmentalists see the fall to be a gradual decline since Eden. There has been no recovery, but instead the “original garden has become a degraded desert”.

Last semester in Professor Toia’s drawing class we were exposed to some of his art collection, and this included his spore art works. Here is a description from a gallery he was featured in:

“Over the past decade, Toia has cultivated his interest in mushrooms and the physical capture of their spores. His spore drawings are unique examples of his partnership with nature. Decades ago, he saw his first scientific spore print. In a controlled environment, a mycologist allows a mushroom to drop its spores for the purpose of scientific study. Toia’s spore drawings are deliberately executed under less controlled conditions. His manipulations combined with chance occurrences lead to surprising results and unworldly imagery. Only a few of his numerous attempts pass his rigorous standards of approval for his art.” http://kimfostergallery.com/jim-toia/

How do we dissect this form of artwork? How natural is it? Is Toia’s art more natural than other’s spore art because he depends on mother nature for a worthy piece? (such as shape of mushroom, how much spore it drops, and the way air flows over the piece to give the paper its detail)

While watching the movie there was a constant theme of bringing up how they wanted to drill for oil in the caribou’s calving grounds. I think this was an important political statement, but the George Bush figurine was a little too much. By satirizing the moving and President Bush, you completely deter Bush supporters from supporting your cause. If this element had been eliminated it may have been a more effective statement. That being said, no good movie is ever completely unbiased.

The narrators also talk a lot about how they feel like they are intruding on this natural space. They go to great lengths to leave the caribou undisturbed. This causes me to question what does this young couple see humans role in nature as? Do they think people should visit this place? Do they think that no one should ever come here?

I did not believe the people at Hawk Mountain when they said that Golden Eagles could take down entire deer, but this movie proves that wrong. The Golden Eagle wounds the calf, and then presumably goes back to eat him later.

I liked the circular effect of the documentary. It shows you their struggle of reentering society, an adjusting to the noises of city life. You can really feel Leanne’s emotion in her final plea to save the caribou.

“The earth is an agent of regeneration. Death is transformed into life through a reunification of the corn mother’s body with the earth. Even death therefore results in a higher good” (133).

“We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as ‘wild.’ Only the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful..” (145)- Chief Luther Standing Bear

“In the Western tradition it is fallen nature in opposition to which male science and technology are directed. The good state that keeps unruly nature in check is invented, engineered, and operated by men. The good economy that organizes the labor needed to restore the garden is likewise a male-directed project”. (137)

I just wanted to share a recent Facebook post from my family friend who is a deer hunter. I’m not entirely sure what the second sentence in his post means, but I think it has to do with shooting off some piece of the buck before he actually got it. I was wondering what the general thoughts may be on the kinds of pictures in this post, the fact that he posted it on Facebook in the first place, and his commentary.