Environmental Humanities

Chasms of Denial

2010-10-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the 6 month anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in the history of our addiction to oil. Interesting how quickly I forgot about this disaster. I remember vague terms like, top kill, top hat, corexit, dispersant, dead, ravaged, economy, Cajun, and culture, but these terms would quickly fade as I went about my daily routine. Until yesterday.

Terry - friend, hero, activist, author, inspiration, instructor - has just published a compelling piece about the Gulf oil spill in Orion Magazine, The Gulf Between Us. I feel Terry provides us with a view of the Gulf we have not seen before - first by giving a voice to those who are living in Ground Zero, and secondly, making the argument that we are All in this together.

I've read it and feel an overwhelming urge to share it. Please take a look at it if you haven't already, then forward it on to your friends, loved ones - everyone.

Area Cats Discover Rare New Tatum

2010-06-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

21 June 2010, Sugarhouse SLC - In a backyard enclosure some have called "Jurassic Park" due to the ancient lineage of its residents a new discovery has been made. Amidst five run of the mill chickens is a bold chicken who goes by the name of Bobsled Meatloaf Tatum, Esq. Some have claimed that this chicken bears a striking resemblance to one Steve Tatum. Genetic tests have not yet confirmed or denied this allegation.

Loud meowing was heard this morning near the enclosure as area cats are mystified by the forcefield that is emitted from this chicken. Some cats claim fowl play.

Resident anthropologist Alex Porpora was quoted as saying "I'm no paleontologist, but the resembalence is striking."

When reporters tried to get comment from Bobsled Meatloaf Tatum, she was silent with the exception of some soft clucking. The other chickens, Double-Down, Bebop, Rocksteady, Peepsquatch and Kevin Bowflex were unavailable for comment as they were eating grapes, pecking at poop and running around their enclosure.

Some in the neighborhood are skeptical of the rare new Tatum. SLC resident Bill Stadwiser reportedly said "Rare new Tatum? I'd say it'd be better well done. Or blackened. Maybe with some barbeque sauce."

The proprietors of A & B Farms in the fabled "Jurassic Park" enclosure

The Tatum chicken, noted for its chill behavior is in the back.

Lost Generation

2010-03-04T12:51:00.001-08:00

Brilliant video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

Interesting Discussion Topic for Story's Class Tonight

2010-02-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

Utah lawmakers looking to develop coal deposits in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_14377307

UPDATE: The Cove

2010-02-09T13:16:00.001-08:00

Relevant for all of you who participated in Terry's class last semester or have been following this issue/film.

http://www.thewrap.com/article/cove-finally-be-seen-japan-14012

Enjoy

cheesy olive-y bread-y recipe

2010-01-31T21:37:00.000-08:00

Hey Y’all!

Many of you have asked me about ‘the’ bread, so I decided to dedicate my first blog ever to revealing my cheesy olive-y bread-y recipe for all to see.

These instructions are merely suggestions… Please do make it your own and figure out ways to kick it up a notch.

Ingredient list for Cheesy Olive-y Rosemary-y Deliciousness Bread… makes 2 loafs:

Flour - 4.5ish cups (all purpose unbleached white 2.5ish cups and whole wheat 2ish cups)

Eggs -2

Salt – tbspoon-ish

Olive oil – a skosh

Black olives – apx 1 cup chopped

Crushed rosemary – to taste (2 tbspoons?)

Water (1.5 cups @ warm apx 100 degrees F)

2 packages dry active yeast (4.5 tsp.)

Sugar – 2 tbspoons.

Shredded cheddar cheese (I recommend Tillamook and obviously the more the better)

Time: 15 minutes of ‘work’ over 1.5ish hours elapsed from start to finish.

Directions:

Wash hands, roll up sleeves, put on your bread-baking/dancing shoes
Warm the water in the microwave or on a stove. Transfer to mixing bowl.
add yeast packets… mix well and let sit 5 minutes to activate (dice olives during this time)
After 5 minutes, add eggs, sugar, salt, rosemary, and olive oil. Stir well with a fork-like object and break up the egg yokes.
Slowly add flour to mixture as well as olives (so they distribute evenly). Mix well with forkish-like implement at first and then with clean hands as the dough solidifies. Have a friend/spouse/helper monkey add more flour as needed. Finished dough should be firmish/squishy, easily moldable and not especially sticky. Mix thoroughly and make sure you touch it with your (clean) hands to get the feel.
Leave dough in bowl, cover with a clean towel and set aside in a warm place until dough doubles in size (roughly ½ hour at 100 degrees F).
As dough-rising nears completion, preheat oven to 350 degrees F and get the cheese from the fridge. Grease your baking sheets/bread pans with a generous, but not silly amount of olive oil.
Fun part: Punch the risen dough down and knead it for a while. Divide the dough into two equal parts and play with it some more. Shape it how you wish, but longer and thinner formations means that it will bake more thoroughly. Work some shredded cheese into the dough, but try to keep it centered in the dough as it tends to adhere to the baking sheets during cooking. (Cutting the dough into three rolled segments and braiding it is an advanced technique worth trying out later).
Place dough on/in oiled baking sheet/bread pan and drizzle olive oil / sprinkle cheese over/on the top. Place in oven on center rack and bake at 350 for 25 – 30 minutes (until crust is golden brown). Feel free to add more cheese to the top half way through. Bake until the outside of the bread turns into a golden brown color, the cheese bubbles a bit and your home is filled with the delicious fragrance of bready goodness.
Carefully remove the bread from the oven and let cool a few minutes before transferring to a cutting board and serving. Turning the oven off is the important last step that I always forget.
Add some salted butter to the top of a slice of bread and be prepared for your tongue to freak out and demand more.

All the best and enjoy!

BS!

If you have not heard...

2010-01-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

I assume most of you are privy to this information and basking in the absurdity as I am. But for those of you who haven't yet heard, our wonderful HoR has come up with a fabulous joint resolution that I believe deserves some attention.

Read it here, post your comments and enjoy!
http://le.utah.gov/~2010/bills/hbillint/hjr012.pdf

2010-01-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

Recently, in class, we’ve learned a bit about ethnography. In the book “Writing Ethnographic Field Notes” Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw define ethnographic research as: “the study of groups and people as they go about their everyday lives (page 1). Furthermore, the authors put forth that, “ethnographers ultimately produce some sort of written account of what they have seen, heard, and experienced in the field. But different ethnographers, and the same ethnographer at different times, turn experience and observation into written texts in different ways” (page 17).

In light of this theme, I’ve come across a list of tips on How to Write Ethnographic Field Notes.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2081359_write-ethnographic-field-notes.html

Hope these are Helpful

wishing you all the best

-Brooke-

SLC Critical Mass Public Transport

2010-01-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

Make sure to support our community and help improve the air quality by participating in the Critical Mass Public Transport event tomorrow. To sign up and for more info visit this link (if the link doesn't work you can just search for it on facebook).

SLC Critical Mass Public Transport

Thanks,

Jack

literary journal worth checking out

2009-12-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm behind the times on this one, but I thought you all would be interested in this literary/environmental journal. Seems to follow a good environmental humanities approach. Ecotone.

H2Oil: animation

2009-12-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

See this link for a great overview of the relationship between oil and water: http://vimeo.com/7408834

KUER: Rangers Make the Case for Dark Skies (2009-12-09)

2009-12-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Ross Chambless hits the airwaves and makes a compelling case about the importance of dark, night skies.

Take a listen to Part 1 of 2 of his work on the "Dark Triangle".

KUER: Rangers Make the Case for Dark Skies (2009-12-09)

Great job, Ross!

Guerilla Dinners

2009-12-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

I figured this would be topical, considering how potluck-intensive this semester has been.

In class the other day, Alison brought up the idea of "guerilla dinners". The concept is basically this: coming together, cooking with and eating with friends. The idea is to eat locally, frugally, cook together and spend time together. Nice fit into our idea of community. We can take it further by dining in hard to access places, outdoors, etc. We eat together, but don't spend a lot of time cooking together. Isn't the kitchen where the magic really happens?

In the spirit of eating, I think we should post some of our favorite recipes (Brussels Sprouts recipes are even invited to participate), and haikus about food in the comments section. If we get enough, maybe we can start working on an EH cookbook? Go Team!

-Alex Porpora

Red Rock Wilderness

2009-12-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

KUER, our local NPR station ran a story today about how Emery County is forging ahead with its own wilderness act. This is in direct response to America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which has been around in some form for about 20 years and would in its current form declare 9.4 million acres as wilderness.

Emery County is a big deal, it is a highly contentious area that is home to the San Rafael Swell. The area that this wilderness bill at the county level would protect is half a million acres; the RRWA would encompass that plus another half a million.

While Emery County is not breaking new ground with a county level bill, Washington County passed such a piece of legislation, it is different than Washington County in that it is somewhat less politicized. I definitely believe that an effort like this works better from the ground up, citizens should have a say. unfortunately wildlife doesn't pay attention to county boundaries. Where should consensus lie and where should we be willing to compromise?

While doing research for a large piece on Red Rock Wilderness I visited this area not just to hike but to ride an ATV. I had previously experienced areas of the Swell on foot, so I wanted to know what the "other side" was fighting for. The folks who took me out that day had an intimate knowledge of the land. They certainly agreed that some should be set aside, the problem seemed to be with Wilderness, (as opposed to "little w" wilderness), as defined by someone else and imposed on them. Perhaps by focusing on local levels and encouraging community engagement a bill can be devised that satisfies all needs.

I feel a little scattered right now on this issue, probably because I've spent so much time on it. So, listen to the sweet sounds of Dan Bammes' voice as he explains what's goin' on:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1585981/KUER.Local.News/New.Wilderness.in.Emery.County

Your truly, clad in blue jacket, on the "Behind the Rocks Trail" in the Swell.

-Alex Porpora

Beginnings and Endings

2009-12-07T19:02:00.000-08:00

Those of us who participated in "Art, Advocacy and Landscape" taught by Terry Tempest Williams wrapped up our class this past week. Our final task was to create a project or piece of art that incorporated all of the themes we discussed, with an emphasis on community, advocacy and the environment. I am overwhelmed by the power of what we were able to create, both as individuals and a community. Everyone worked on something that was intensely personal to them, and that passion showed. I am grateful to know all of you. Even at the end of this experience, the momentum is there for us to carry on the knowledge that we have gained and to aspire to create the community we want to live in.

I'm please that some of my peers were willing to share their work for this forum. In their piece entitled "Cost Benefit Analysis" Ben C., Alison H., Ross C., Meags M., Lindsy F., and Katie P. created a world made out of currency and change that was photographed at a variety of locations around the state, including the Sun Tunnels, Energy Solutions Arena, Rocky Mountain Power, Kennecott, Temple Square and Pillars of the Community. This was a commentary on how we choose the value the world. All the money that was used will be donated to the Grand Canyon Trust, specifically Mary O' Brien's beaver re-introduction program.

CBA visits Energy Solutions Arena

Earth in perspective at the Sun Tunnels

Andrea N. created a piece of art in response to the proposed bridge across Utah Lake. She said that she wanted to create something positive about the lake, rather than negative about the bridge. Working with friends, she created a bridge out of natural materials and set it out on the lake. The entire process was filmed, no coots were harmed in this production.

These pieces are just the tip of the iceberg, there were maps of lives lived, sunset faces, air pollution dances, primate art, climate change spider plants and more. All of these projects made me so proud to be a part of this community. This is just the beginning of things to come.

-Alex Porpora

Thanksgiving Inversion Hike

2009-11-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

Well, despite the Thanksgiving holidays and my tight turkey-into-face-stuffing schedule, I'm also obligated to write something for our EH collective blogging effort this week. This is Ross by the way. This past Wednesday, 11/25, I was feeling lots of pent up energy. Having been chained to various tables in the library for the past couple weeks reading and writing papers, I was ready to burst come mid-week. So I rode my bike over to my old childhood stomping grounds, the foothills overlooking the Salt Lake valley and hiked to the top of mountain. Actually the mountain is best known as "the H-Rock", a giant black and white, spray-painted rock on the mountain side, a traditional symbol for nearby Highland High School. It's not a long hike to reach the top, but it's very steep. Hiking over sliding shale you have to take your time, lest you lose your footing and have an undesirable tumble backward.

One of the main reasons I decided to hike up this day was to see if I could actually get above the terrible smoggy inversion layer that engulfed the valley that day. Anyone who has lived along the Wasatch Front for sometime is familiar with what happens to our air quality on cold wintery days. Essentially the high pressure, warmer air presses down the colder air coming off the ground, and the enclosed, surrounding mountains don't allow it to escape. This has been a normal phenomenon in the valley forever. But in recent decades with our population growth, increased development, and more people driving automobiles along the Wasatch Front, things have gotten worse. Now we swim in a massive soup of our own automobile exhaust and factory and power plant emissions. Yuck! To read more about the inversion effect in Utah, this guy did a great job explaining it on his blog here)

From the top of the mountain I found a nice rock to perch on and I snapped off a few photos here with my cell phone camera. Having grown up here, I can testify that Salt Lake winters were never this bad. However, I do remember getting asthma when I went running when I was a high school soccer player, and that's when I began realizing what was happening.

It's hard to know what to do. Many of us can walk or bike, but for the most part we all still have to drive cars to get where we need to go. While UTA is pushing ahead with its mass-transit long range plan, we will just have to suffer through it. However, since the EPA revised its standards for stricter air quality to PM 2.5 (PM meaning Fine Particulate Matter), the State was given 3 years to reach compliance. This winter will be three years since then and the state will need to take serious measures to address our air quality situation. This is a good thing, but it also could mean restrictions on driving, incentives for taking the bus or Trax, handing out gas masks, who knows! You can read more about the State Implementation Plan (SIP) here. I for one favor any actions taken to get more people out of their cars and exercising.

"In The Tunnels You Can Actually Walk On Stars"

2009-11-19T19:16:00.000-08:00

a found poem from the Nancy Holt/Helmet Sidney Loe interview in History of the Sun Tunnels Near Lucin, Utah using only Nancy Holt's words.

"I knew it was the right kind of sight for Sun Tunnels, because it was flat and barren and had no other use.

You could see time written on the rocks. In the mountains surrounding the area you can see the lines where the sea bit into the mountains. It was as if my inner landscape and the outer landscape were identical, there was a pervasive sense of oneness.

I don't think there is a way to build to the geographical scale of the environment ... it is so vast, so huge ... I don't think you can compete with the desert scale, even if you wanted to.

These spiraling lines may be the trajectory of bullets. It's not that bad, the lines have a certain energy.

Perception

Distance

Place

Solstice

Scale

I think everything I do is related to the site, to the environment.

It's just part of having something out there in the world."

(photo courtesy of: http://millyboarder.blogspot.com/2007/06/sun-tunnels.html)

Family and Community

2009-11-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

Many who follow this blog are currently in a class called Art, Advocacy, and Landscape with Terry Tempest Williams. In this class, on a daily basis, we find ourselves wondering about ways to save the world. (I say that in jest, but it isn’t far from the truth.) Ways we, individually and as a group, can help our community fix its present problems. And those problems can include anything (climate change, human rights, environmental degradation, education, anything), the key is that it needs to be a community action for meaningful change to occur.

As I progress through the class, I realize that right now community, indeed family, is more important than ever. And for me, community and family need to expand to include each other, become synonymous with the other. Only through the mutual respect for people, a recognition that we all share the same blood, will true environmental change occur.

If we respect each other, treat each other as equals, that same respect will surely carry over to the land. Human rights and a broader sense of community and family are the building blocks of a true respect for the environment.

-- a. holland

Confessions of an off-road outlaw

2009-11-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

While fishing for articles I came across this one about an ORV supporter turned land activist and it struck a nerve:

http://www.hcn.org/wotr/confessions-of-an-off-road-outlaw

I think it's important to remember that people can change, and that there are complexities to our beliefs. Sometimes all that's missing is an experience that opens someone's eyes to the situation around them. Not all ORV drivers and deaf and blind to the havoc they wreak on the land and the habitats they ride in, which this article is a testament to.

Perhaps what's even more important is making an effort to not polarize this issue- or any issue. Not much will get accomplished in an "us versus them" debate because there are people in the areas in between. It wasn't someone telling VeneKlasen that he was wrong that changed his mind, he had to experience it for himself. It's true that not all people are as open-minded and aware as this author, but it goes both ways.

So today or tomorrow or someday soon, practice keeping an open mind...because you never know what will find it's way in.

-Katie

Happy Campers

2009-11-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

I thought we could all use some humor as time tightens and tensions elevate. Whether you like camping or not, this should make you chuckle. Enjoy Jim Gaffigan:

More serious things to come....

-Katie

Wisdom

2009-11-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

Andrew Zuckerman presented to the world his project, Wisdom, with the premier at the State Library of New South Whales in Sydney, Australia on October 16th 2008. With the help of Desmond Tutu, Zuckerman interviewed 51 individuals over the age of 65 on their view of wisdom.

The official website states his concept as:
Inspired by the idea one of the greatest gifts one generation can pass to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, the wisdom project, produced with the cooperation from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, seeks to create a record of a multicultural group of people who have all made their mark on the world. Presented against the same white space, all of the subjects are removed from their context, which not only democratizes them, but also allows for a clear dialogue to exist between them. In an attempt to create a more profound, honest, and truly revealing portrait of these luminaries, the project encompasses their voices, their physical presence, and the written word. This comprehensive portrayal of such a profound and global group is an index of extraordinary perspectives. Wisdom is an ongoing project. Additions to the list of contributors continues.

Here is the trailer/introduction video for the hour long film of all the interviews:

Wisdom - Introduction from State Library of New South Wales on Vimeo.

I really enjoy the words of Robert Redford and Jane Goodall.

Science/Philosophy

2009-11-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

This morning, waiting in my inbox, was an email from one of my favorite groups, The Imaginary Foundation. It was a reminder to check out their blog, which of course I did. For those of you new to The Imaginary Foundation here is a little background info from their site;

The Imaginary foundation was established in Geneva in 1973 as an experimental "think-tank" for new ideas. Created by an eclectic group of free thinkers, the foundation’s research spans
all creative endeavors and assigns as its goal; the wish to eliminate set conventions in favor of the humorous, the abstract and the visionary.

In his vision for the Imaginary Foundation, the Director(whose name is never mentioned anywhere...) knew that the human mind has more than one mode, that indeed it has an "ecology" of being. He knew that imagination, intuition, inspiration are basic to psyche. . . . A philosophy of research began to form: imagination as fundamental to all learning; artistic making as a model of integrating vision, materials, structure, and imagery.

"What makes true vision is the poetry of life and the richness of nature"

I have been a long time fan of their philosophy and tee-shirts, a medium The Director considers essential to getting their message out.

The post I would like to highlight focuses on music/science/cosmos/Carl Sagan. This is relevant considering the reading some of us just finished for Terry's class on Gaia and Lovelock, who had conversations with Sagan. It also touches on the level of the Universe which is something Jack Turner challenges us to consider. I find it funny that someone (this guy) would take the time to remix words of Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye to match beats!

Here is the video with subtitles so you can read along.

and the original IF post.

New Found Music

2009-11-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

I have enjoyed this song over the past week and would like to share it with you all. It is by The Cinematic Orchestra and called Dawn.

I only recently stumbled upon The Cinematic Orchestra and did a little background check to see what they are all about. Formed in the late 90's they are a British based jazz band and their recorded albums bring together improvised live jazz and electronic elements by the turntablist/DJ.

The barn and mountains provide a great image to accompany the music but I always close my eyes and imagine snow blanketing everything. I love most music and use it for different purposes. This I find truly beautiful and while I do use music to fill the background empty space while I actively participate in something else, I find when this is playing I stop what I am doing to just listen. It is captivating.

Enjoy.

Cinematic Orchestra "Dawn" from JT GURZI on Vimeo.

for trees.

2009-10-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

alpine loop, dre, october 2008

Riding TRAX last night, I met a man who introduced himself as "Tree".

That's a nice name, I told him. Where did it come from?

"Well, my mother named me Forrest but she said I was too much an individual, so I'm Tree."

"Trees, it could be said, represent the bones of our collective body."

John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce

Do you have a story with a tree?

I've had some music running through my head.

2009-10-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share it with you.

I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Final National Parks

2009-10-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Thursday night's segment of Ken Burn's National Parks documentary focused on the years of the Great Depression and World War II. With the country in an extended state of crisis, National Parks struggled to remain in the public's attention. Yet, even during the economic turmoil, President FDR made the preservation of National Parks an important staple to his term. He even created jobs for unemployeed citizens within the parks. Do you think that this era, which managed to be environmentally concious while struggling to regain its economic wealth, could be compared to the current condition of the United States? President Obama has been faced with great pressure to aid a failing economy, yet also recognizes the need for change to protect our planet. There is a growing polutation that recognizes that economy and environment do not have to be separate entities, but could in fact work together. Do you agree?

National Parks Cont.

2009-10-01T08:43:00.001-07:00

Last night the 4th segment of Ken Burn's National Parks documentary covered the span of time during the 1920s and 30s. The focus of that time was increase visitation to the parks, proving that they were a worthwhile investment to Congress. With the emergence of the automobile and greater mobility, roads became vital to visitor attraction.

Today we have the opposite problem. Salt Lake's beloved canyons are overflowing with people and cars, many say that they should have reached capacity 20 years ago. With the Wasatch Canyons Master Plan in the process of revision, it has been proposed to shut down the canyons to cars during peak hours and implementing a shuttle system. This would cut down on emissions and clear the roads, making them safer for bikers. Many say this could never happen, that cars in the canyons is how it always has been, yet take a look at Zion National Park, who's interior switch to a shuttle system about ten years ago. Do you think it would be possible to be car-less in the canyons? Is this a good idea or preposterous?

National Parks

2009-09-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Last night PBS aired the first of Ken Burns' 6 part series National Parks: America's Best Idea. Like many of Burns' past documentaries, he focuses on something with American origins, such as baseball or jazz. As PBS shares, "It is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone." The first 2 hour segment focused on the foundations of National Parks, specifically Yosemite and Yellowstone Parks. As a whole the documentary had a very positive, feel-good aura to it, emphasizing the spiritual and religious appeals the parks had on the people who visited. I especially liked the segment on John Muir and his eccentric habits.

Though only briefly touched on, it was the role of the Native Americans and the parks that really interested me. Natives were first mentioned in the segment on Yosemite. The local Miwok tribe called the area Awooni, meaning "large gaping mouth," which I found to be not only a literal description of how the area looked, but also an example of their deference to nature. Directly contrasted, in 1851, L. H. Bunnell of the Mariposa Battalion, thought to name the park Yosemite, which he thought sounded very AAmerican yet ironically, in the language of the local Miwok tribe translated to "those who kill." Is this story an illustration of the origins of our National Parks, which though an ingenious idea, forced out and brutally murdered many natives in the area. As an Native American park ranger in the documentary said "Yosemite didn't need to be discovered, it was never lost." While proposing National Parks was one of our nations greatest acts, was it also an act of violence? Does this taint our experience, or does it add to America's ever controversial history?

Imagine

2009-09-25T16:42:00.001-07:00

northeast shore in autumn
fireside of the pond
summer's last embers

--from "House-Warming", Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku

For a day, ensconced in a weekend, we made this place our home. We tend to externalize the meaning of home, but metaphors begging for the interiority of home abound. A Christian saying suggests if you don't keep your home--the seat of the soul--swept clean, the worst possible influences will work their way in. Old Buddhists say if you haven't cleaned your bowls and swept your house--as the Buddha would say--"I am not done yet".

I think the whole idea of home is central to who we are as human beings.

--Terry Tempest Williams.

The public lands are in effect our communal home. While we may not be Native in origin, our country has given us the opportunity to cultivate together a place, however diminished from ancient times, where we can live from time to time collectively, in solitude, and with relative freedom.

I really believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among...The notion that we can extend our sense of community, our idea of community, to include all life forms--plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings--then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home.

--Terry Tempest Williams

We often conceive of home as the place where we feel most secure, the place we know most and best, the place where we are most deeply tied to landscapes, family and community. We think of it as the place we defend, the place we protect, and the place we honor.

I had thoughtlessly accepted the common assumption...that the world is merely an inert surface that man lives on and uses...that summer, I began to see, however dimly, that one of my ambitions, perhaps my governing ambition, was to belong fully to this place, to belong as the thrushes and the herons and the muskrats belonged, to be altogether at home here...It is a spiritual ambition, like goodness.

--Wendell Berry, exerpted from "The Long-Legged House", in Rebecca Kneale Gould, At Home in Nature

Our more recent forefathers have not been good to this place. David Orr's urgent lecture left out the damage that our carbon-intensive and synthetic lifestyles have and are wreaking on the ecosystems that make up perhaps the best--and certainly the most necessary--part of our home. Grand Teton National Park is expected to be hit and hit hard by global climate change, along with a number of mainly Western national parks and ecosystems.

US Fish and Wildlife Service
Global Warming Video

Losing Ground: Western National Parks Endangered by Climate Disruption
2006 Report

The world really is a very feminine place, a mother's place, conceptive, brooding, nourishing; a place of infinite patience and infinite elusiveness. It needs to be lived in more or less feminely, and the chief reason why we have never succeeded in being quite at home in it is that our method has been almost exclusively masculine. We have assaulted the earth, ripped out the treasure of its mines, cut down its forests, deflowered its fields and left them sterile for a thousand years. We have lived precisely on the same terms with our fellows, combatively, competitively, geocentrically. Nations have not struggled to make the world a better place, but only to make a more advantageous place for themselves. Man invented the State in the key of maleness, with combat for its major preoccupation, profit the spur and power the prize.

--Mary Austin

In Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams simultaneously recounts the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Refuge and her family's experience--most poignantly her mother the generations of women who have succombed to breast cancer--living downwind of the Nevada nuclear testing site.

Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water and light...The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing to do with the people's parks is to destroy them bit by bit as they are able. Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden...

--John Muir, "Dam Hetch-Hetchy!"

Sad to say, home seems at times the place where we confront our darker selves, where we live under conditions beyond our control, and where we must play the hand we are dealt.

US Fish and Wildlife Service
Draft Plan to Confront Global Warming
Appendix

Our duty, living in this place, what Gary Snyder has called our Earth household, is to reclaim it from our own degradation, remediate its wounds and restore both wildness and our sense of home to these places, places such as our narrow valley in Grand Teton National Park.

Grizzly Shot by Hunter: Teton Cub?
Jackson Hole News

And we are empowered to do so.

Bears Get Protection
Jackson Hole News 2

Exercise
Get in a comfortable place. Meditate for about five minutes, relaxing your breath, letting your thoughts come and go, contemplating the visual moments that softly come to mind from Saturday's journey. Now, visualize three other places, one at a time, as fully and deeply as possible, where you have been most happy or content. One way to do this exercise is to link three other natural places. But a potent variation is to link places where you feel most at home: a chair, your bed, your car, scenes with friends. For each one, touch your thumb and a finger of your writing hand. The fourth finger is reserved for the foot of the Tetons. Continue rotating these images until the emotions return with strength for each of these recollections.

Question
Of all the places that you will dimly remember, what visualization from Saturday's journey will you be recollecting most often?

Gladly we see the flies dancing in the sun-beams, birds feeding their young, squirrels gathering nuts, and hear the blessed ouzel singing confidingly in the shallows of the river,--most evangel, calming every fear, reducing everything to love.

--John Muir, "Yellowstone", Our National Parks

It may be far more parsimonious, today, to suggest that mind is not at all a human possession, but is rather a property of the earthly biosphere--a property in which we, along with the other animals and plants, all participate. The apparent interiority that we ascribe to the mind...[has] more to do with a sense that you and I are both situated inside it--a recognition that we are bodily immersed in an awareness that is not ours, but is rather the Earth's.

--David Abrams, "The Air Aware"
Orion Magazine

Here is calm so deep, grasses cease waving...Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song and trememdous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

--John Muir, "Mountain Thoughts"

What we attend to is what we experience, and what we experience becomes our life and world. If you want nature to be a part of your live and world, then you have to pay attention to it. There are no substitutes or shortcuts. Theory and policy won't work. But for a day last week all of us did indeed attend to that wonderful river bottom riparian area near the Snake River. I noticed some things I have never noticed before, and I believe most of you did too. When your life is looking grim or you are being e-mailed to death, recall the peace and contemplation of our day together. Then go out and practice it on your own.

--Jack Turner, e-mail, Friday September 25, 2009

into the forest
a hunter at first
then leaving the gun behind

--from "Higher Laws"
Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku

Thanks
David M. Hoza

Identification

2009-09-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

a dandelion
now and then interrupting
the butterfly's dream

--Chiyojo, Far Beyond the Field

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of species were present or had passed through the open spaces we walked through, sat in, contemplated and meditated on. Many annuals had already died; trees whose spirits had left their bodies fallen and decaying back into the earthen floor, and those that had not. Insects frenzied with the soon to be dawning purge of their lives in the harsh bight of cold and the dark, frigid mantle of winter.

We are born in the minds of mountains. They hold our eyes on the horizon, shape our imaginations, and draw our gaze upward. We climb their peaks and touch clouds. We linger in the creases of their canyons and sit by streams and dream. Waterfalls. Wind rustling through the leaves.

--Terry Tempest Williams, The Range of Memory

The wild godesses and gods live in the wild plants. Once, all of our godesses and gods were plants and animals. The allies are the ancient goddesses and gods, their wisdom the ancient substrate of our volition; they are the maternal transmitters of our vision and dreams. Anthropomorphic goddesses and gods were the children of plant deities. that is why destroying wild habitat is parricide, because the goddesses and gods cannot live without their habitat, and it was the deities that made us, and gave us our culture.

--adapted from "On Wildness in the Plants", Pharmako/Poeia

At one side of this herb plot were other growths of a rustic pharmacopoeia, great treasures and rarities among the commoner herbs. There were some strange and pungent odors that aroused a dim sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. some of these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries...

--Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

Weasel! I'd never seen one before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.

--Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

What I mean to say is I have come to depend on these places where I write. I've grown accustomed to looking up from the page and letting my eyes relax on a landscape upon which no human artifact intrudes...I consider myself lucky beyond words to go to work every morning with something like a wilderness at my elbow.

--Barbara Kingsolver, "Knowing Our Place", Off the Beaten Path

When you take me from this good rich soil
to slaughter in your heavenly shambles,
rattle my bones until the spirit breaks;

no heart of mine will scurry at your call
to lie blank as a slug in the ground where
my hips once rocked and my long legs willowed.

No heaven could please me as my love
does, nor match the bonfire his incendiary eyes
spark from dead-coal through my body's cabin.

When, deep in the cathedral of my ribs,
love rings like a chant, I need no heaven
Though you take me from this good rich soil,

where I grew like a spore in your wily heat,
rattle my bone-house until the spirit breaks;
my banquet senses are rowdy guests to keep...

--Diane Ackerman, from "Earth", Jaguar of Sweet Laughter

La Mariposa--Butterfly Woman
adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves
may be found in the post directly below.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders.

--Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Exercise
Find a list of 10 plants, animals, birds, matter, insects, whatever, that you have 'botanized', identified, from Saturday's journey. If you have the time, memorize it. Sit in a quiet place the same way you did at the foot of the Tetons, and relax and breathe, using the list as a mantra. As you recite each of the identifications on the list, try to visualize them as you did when we were doing Kinhin through the narrow valley. When the visualizations become vivid, let them go.

Question
Can you identify 10 plants, birds, insects, matter, snakes, whatever, from Saturday's journey?

And so at last I climbed
the honey tree, ate
chunks of pure light, ate
the dark hair of the leaves,
the rippling bark,
the heartwood. Such
frenzy!

--Mary Oliver, "The Honey Tree", American Primitive

Oftentimes the Forest Woman, Sacha Huarmi, will appear, a vegetalista, a brilliant macaw headdress, nine necklaces of toucan feathers, twelve bracelets she wears, a skirt woven of bark, a feathered lance, and a little iron pot filled with medicines...

--adapted from "Plants as Teachers", Pharmako/Poeia

With a field guide in hand, our grandmother shows my cousin and me how to identify wildflowers. The flower before us is purple with a large green leaf that spreads out like a star and holds a droplet of water at its center. "Lupine--" she says. "Lupine--"we repeat.

--Terry Tempest Williams, The Range of Memory

lost in the woods--
only the sound of a leaf
falling on my hat

--Tagami Kikusha, Far Beyond the Field

David M. Hoza

La Mariposa: Butterfly Woman

2009-09-24T20:09:00.001-07:00

Many people have lost touch with their ancestors. They often do not know the names of those beyond their grandparents. Spiritually, this situation causes sorrow--and hunger. So many are trying to re-create something important for soul sake. Here, the Anasazi once called to each other. Tribes came together here to dance themselves back into lodgepole pines, deer, eagles, and Katsinas, powerful spirits. Now, the hungry come to see something not everyone will be able to see, one of the wildest of the wild, a living numen, La Mariposa, the Butterfly Woman.

As the sun begins to set, the drummers begin to drum, drumming the sacred butterfly rhythm, and the chanters begin to cry to the Gods for all they are worth. She is old, very old, like a woman come back from dust, old like old river, old like old pines at timberline. One of her shoulders is bare. Her red-and-black manta--blanket dress--hops up and down with her inside it. Her heavy body and her very skinny legs make her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale.

The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine. Butterfly's hair reaches to the ground. It is thick as ten maize sheaves and stone grey. She wears butterfly wings. Her footsteps leave echos. She fans the earth and the people of the earth with the pollinating spirit of the butterfly. Her shell bracelets rattle like snake, her bell garters tinkle like rain. The spirit world is a place where wolves are women, bears are husbands, and old, lavish women are butterflies.

She carries the thunderworld in one breast, the underworld in the other. Her back is the curve of the planet Earth with all its crops and foods and animals. The back of her neck carries the sunrise and sunset. Her left thigh holds all lodgepoles, her right thigh all the she-wolves of the world. She cross-fertilizes, just as the soul fertilizes mind with night-dreams, just as archetypes fertilize the mundane world. She brings opposites together. Transformation is no more complicated than that. The self need not carry mountains to transform.

--adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

David M. Hoza

Andy Ross

2009-09-23T21:00:00.001-07:00

Identity

2009-09-23T20:22:00.001-07:00

I only went out for a walk,
and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found,
was really going in.

--John Muir

Narcissus saw himself in a still pool of water, and fell in love. Snow White's queen asked again and again, "Who's the fairest one of all?"--satisfied with but one answer. Perhaps we should re-think our traditional relationships to nature and reflection. If I grow so still inside and very present, and the I that I know vanishes, the Other filling my sense, what then?

Intelligence with the earth
myself partly leaves
and vegetable mold

--from "Solitude", Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku

Des identified with the places she'd skied, Diane with the White Tara of Compassion; Steve with David Abrams, Dylan or Jack or Bryan with the native Shoshone songs of his tribe, Brooke with Yoga and the cycles of the moon.

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Mark identified with charismatic megafauna, no one to my knowledge identified with the wasps; many of us identified with a good beer. I identified with landscapes I call home, and the names and places of stories that have grown dear to me.

The Murie Center
in partnership with Grand Teton National Park

After 30 seconds, a twittering bird is added to the ambience.

I had stopped to rest on a boulder on top of a low butte at the north end of the Elk Refuge. It was one of those fresh-cool days of early spring when you just walk out among the aspen trees, looking for things--anything that confirms what you already know.

--Olaus Murie, Wapiti Wilderness

The whole parade of plants, animals and birds goes on from this date, too fast, too many to count, too many keen impressions to chronicle. Yellowbells and purple phacelia by the garden, green grass, green buds everywhere, first robin, first yellow warbler, first sound of ruffed grouse drumming. Evening is the enchanted time...Suddenly we stand still and listen.

--Margaret (Mardy) Murie, Wapiti Wilderness

Exum Mountain Guides
Jenny Lake, Wyoming

Better to live in the presence of the wild--feel it, smell it, see it--and do something that succeeds, like Gary Nabhan's preservation of wild seeds or Doug Peacock's intimacy with grizzlies...We only value what we know and love...

--Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild

Teton Science Schools

I got to hold a live Great Horned Owl! Roger Smith, a former Teton Science Schools faculty member and founder of the Raptor Fund (based in Wilson, across the valley) visited the graduate students. Roger brought a few friends: Owlie the Great Horned Owl, and Ruby the Red Tailed Hawk. It was an incredible experience to hold these powerful and majestic birds. It totally spoke to the power of personal experience with wildlife--all of us were completely enthralled and wanted to know every single bit of natural history about the birds; I can imagine even a less-inclined crowd couldn't ignore the magnitude of having a bird that close to you. So cool!

--Maggie Bourque, Teton Science Schools Graduate Student

Exercise

Using nature as your mirror, take a walk through your favorite natural, feral or wild space and, letting go of your thoughts, walking in the style of kinhin, breathe in the self that you see, and breathe out relaxation and lovingkindness. Repeat until it's time to do something else.

Question

What did you most identify with on Saturday's journey? How do you see that as part of yourself, a part of your self image? What might be the significance of having that as part of the makeup of your identity?

And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I am driftwood in the stream
Indra in the sky
looking down on it

--from "Solitude"
Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku

David M. Hoza

2009-09-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

--Andy

Immersion

2009-09-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

picnic at the river
where wolves came down the mountain
became human

Winona Baker, from "Summer", Moss Hung Trees: Haiku of the West Coast 1992

You may remember that Jack Turner through readings and commentary pointed to the tragedy of commodified attention. Twitters and blogs, I-pods and Blackberries, cellphones and the internet shatter our oneness with the present, forever mediating our direct experience in ways that may ironically make us long for Turner's "poor substitutes".

We began our trip in the city, and wound through mountain peaks and sagebrush plains, meandering from state to state, immersing in the conversations of the day, the speedgoats, those busty Tetons, the hunt for wild game.

Psychotherapists and Eastern practitioners alike by the mid 1980's and 1990's recognized the waning capacity for immersion, that place where Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi located the experience of flow, the place where we become one with our environment and our activity, and attention is no longer divided. Thomas Moore in The Soul of Sex--a book not about the act of sex as about the relationship of Eros and Psyche--too recognized that in our sped up and divided lifestyles we were no longer attending to the rituals, journeys, images or sensations that bring us into a place of fulfillment and satiation, a place where craving gives way to deep satisfaction, where longing and desire are quenched with experience.

In The Desert Quartet, Terry Tempest Williams takes us on a journey--a journey rooted in place--descending into deep canyons, cave pools and the journey to the soul. Much alike, our journey began on a sagebrush plain, hiding in its crook the folds where forest and river preside, nuanced eco-regions living side by side, juxtaposing dryness and moisture, dessication and life-giving springs. Through a series of elementals we are swept into and out of Ms. Williams' experience, one not intended to mediate, but to exemplify and endure as sign in the absence of direct experience. A passage of depth into the tranquility of nature-based place and back from nirvana.

Present.
Completely present.
My eyes focus on one current in particular,
a small eddy that keeps circling back upon itself.

Around and around,
a cottonwood leaf spins,
a breeze gives it a nudge,
and it glides downriver,

this river braided with light.

Terry Tempest Williams, Red, 2001

It's not by accident
that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears
as the understanding of our own inner wild natures fades.

It is not so coincidental
that wolves and coyotes, bears and wildish women
have similar reputations.

--Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves, 1992

Haiku Moments
When the writer's sense of self
dissolves into egolessness
a dropping away of the boundaries between
self and world

the attempt to place us
in the world itself

As if the writer and her language
were not even there
intervening between us
and piece of the world
under consideration

adapted from Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku, 2009

There were numerous moments when we were immersed. Recall the moments spent chopping cucumbers, peppers or chicken. Recall Allison immersed in the process of dinner. Recall Meaghan speedgoat in a unitard, the shooting stars of the sky, the moodiness of our departure, the solemnity of our first steps, the settling in to the rhythm of the day.

Sit. Stand. Walk. Observe. Listen. Smell. Sit.

Recall the fanning out of our pack, the slow motion of our tribe through tall grasses, through the dead and evergreen trees, across turquoise rocks wet with spring and river water. Recall Brooke immersed in stalking Jack Turner as if stalking her prey, recall descending shallow drains, ascending shallow rises, overlooking the bearded trees of a hidden wild place of beauty and moisture and forgotten histories of fingerling fish and winged ospreys. Recall the joyous breaking of the fast of silence, the evening's pliable communion, whetted with the Dionysian liquors of comraderie.

I
have often wondered about the rituals the Ancients used to prepare for the ceremonies that led to anthropomorphs and other petroglyph and pictographic images. An LA Times writer who recently spent time in Range Creek Canyon with members of our own Western Soundscape Archive pondered the possibilities of the sounds that scaped the world of the Ancients, whose rituals of gathering plants, preparing the dyes, chiseling the tools, and entering into the sacred space of oneness with the tasks at hand surely would have immersed them in the sounds of the canyon that may have influenced the images they left behind.

The Sounds of Range Creek Canyon

La Loba
Wolf Woman

They say she lives among the rotten granite slopes, though they say she has been found all over. She is known to collect and preserve especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montanas, the mountains, arroyos, riverbeds, looking for wolf bones. And when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing. And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. Wolf Woman sings more and the wolf breathes, breathes, then runs down canyon. Whether by speed or splash in the river, caught in sunlight or the black of the new moon, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon. If La Loba takes a liking to you--count yourself lucky! She just may show you something of the soul.

--adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

Exercise

Thomas Moore in The Soul of Sex cultivates something of the spell of the sensuous. If you have a partner, sit with your partner just the way you did at the foot of the Tetons. Relax. Breathe. Let your thoughts come and go. Close your eyes to sharpen your sense of touch. Let go of anything sexual, and immerse in the sensual. Holding your hands and forearms over your partner's, gently touch the crook of the elbow. Slowly and lightly, ever so lightly, brush your hand across their forearm. Get to know the hairs intimately, get to know their fingers, each joint, the jutting of the heel of their hand, the crotches of the fingers. If you have no partner, try one hand on the arm of the other, and see whether the left--or the right hand--arouses a greater sense of intimacy.

Question

We had a number of moments when we were immersed in experience. Recall a moment in detail where that sense of immersion was most vivid.

Simply allowing
the affairs of the human world
and the doings of the natural world
to resonate with one another

Haiku
eschews metaphor
and figurative language
to attempt to see
nature on its own terms
--not in terms of something else.

--adapted from Ian Marshall, Walden by Haiku

The Clouds. One's self then
becomes a wilderness, clouds
being within us.

--An Painter, A Coyote in the Garden, 1988

David M. Hoza

Impermanence

2009-09-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

From Kumuka.com

Trying to hear
what is in the wind
I lose my own breath

...from "Economy", Walden by Haiku, Ian Marshall, 2009

As we communied in circular fashion 'round the yellow eye of campfire Saturday night, we mused our preoccupations and challenges from the day's near-unmediated experience in the feral lands footing the Tetons. Jack Turner in asides assuaged impermanence, the so-called truth of life and death; all things come into being and cease to exist; experience emerges, falls back into nothing.

Yet the week's end too wore a surprising array of juxtaposition and irony: scorching jet planes against wild nature; our birdsong of conversations as against the deeper immersion in the text of feral nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson bemoaned the fleeting, ephemeral nature of experience in his landmark essay.

"Experience"
http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-2nd_Series_2_Experience.htm

We are those who imagine the places we have been along with the ethics and practices that would preserve them for future generations' experience, yet another juxtaposition, another irony exists in the way we are called upon to make abstract signals and gestures that evoke--in what Thoreau might have called wild image and sign--the way to direct experience and the protection and sustainable use of our wild, feral, natural, open, communal spaces.

Exercise

Take five minutes or 20. In the first segment, sit more or less as you did in one of the places we took the time to sit and meditate. Imagine the bell ringing again, and use the triggers of recollection to re-situate yourself in that moment. Breathe. Try to recall the temperature of the still and breezing winds on your bare skin, the prickle of the plants beneath you, the sights, smells and sounds in as rich and vivid detail as you experienced them. Whether you can fully recollect, memories are embedded in your memory in exact and compelling detail. Remember that. Relax. Breathe. Close your eyes. Recollect the way your body felt from the wind in your hair to the feeling of your toes in sandals, shoes or bare, and all points in between. Recall the feel of the sun and distinctness of shadow, the sounds of the crickets and other insects, the bristling of the dead Western purple coneflower leaves yet living and yellow at their centers, in the gentle gusts of wind. Recall all the sensual details, as you would a body scan meditation, breathing in and our in the elbow, in the left heel, in the stomach, at the top of the head; just so, the view from that seated position, the smells, sights and sounds, specifically, one...and then another. Then let go. Breathe in, recollect. Smile. The neurochemistry may help you remember. Breathe out. Let go. Just breathe, meditate, let go of your thoughts, let them come and go, relax, let go.

--Diamondpoint Coaching

Question

The question for the day is this: Though we are apparently doomed to forget this experience, its meanings and epiphanies waning in the wake of what Ralph Waldo Emerson--or perhaps it was Thoreau--referred to as the tyranny of Now, what shall we remember most and most often? What will you bring back from our time at the foot of the Grand Tetons?

Thank you
for your attention and patience.

From "Economy", Walden by Haiku, Ian Marshall, 2009...

A striped snake
lying still in the pond
as long as I stay there

David M. Hoza

Neozoon...fur coat graffiti

2009-09-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

www.neozoon.org
While on the road to our Tetons field-trip with Jack Turner, these women came up in conversation. They use old fur coats, cut into the shapes of various animals, to 're-inhabite' urban environments with non-human animals.

Dylan

Boundary in Human/Non-Human Relations

2009-09-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

In nomadic societies a boundary marks a sacred site where the being of power dwells, where its power is strong and its children are protected. These sacred locales and sanctuaries are everywhere in Aboriginal Australia. In societies where village life is more rooted, there is a tendency to situate the boundary between nature and culture. In either case, this separation of the mysterious and the familiar has a practical advantage. It segregates the world of mystery from the world human beings have control over. Without that boundary, the world of mystery does not stand apart from the world of human making; each world contaminates the other. On this side of the boundary, a space needs to be held open for ordinary human ingenuity and predictability: it cannot become dense with superstition. On the other side of the boundary there must be room for intelligent nature to behave in all of its wild unpredictability: that realm can never become uniform with the human capacity to remake the environment, as on the maps of explorers and colonizers. The societies that have not survived are the ones that have not respected boundary or that have had their sense of boundary obliterated.

Sean Kane, Wisdom of the Mythtellers pg. 102

Dylan 9/17/09

"Wilderness is the red carpet to Socialism"

2009-09-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in eastern Utah, there is a bumper-sticker that reads “Wilderness is the red carpet to socialism.” I’m not sure what this statement is supposed to mean. I have never, personally, thought there was anything ‘socialist’ about wilderness. The Wilderness Act of 1964 passed the Senate 73-12, the House of Representatives 373-1, and was signed into law by President Johnson. Say what you will, but it’s a stretch to say that the US had 73 Socialist Senators and 373 Socialist Representatives in 1964.

I don’t see environmental issues as political or economic, and am always frustrated when they are framed in such a manner. I see wilderness as something that nourishes the soul, among other things, but never as such a base issue of monetary gain or political power.

Dylan 9/16/09

2009-09-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I have been casually compiling quotes about reading one's surroundings, or communication in some sense. Here are a few of these:

...we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

-Thoreau

The field has eyes, the wood has ears; I will look, be silent, and listen.

-Hieronymous Bosch

The man failed to sense that here was something more than a bird call, that here was a secret message, calling not for rendition in counterfeit syllables, but for translation and understanding.

-Aldo Leopold

ALL THE WORM TRAILS UNDERNEATH THE BARK

OF A GIANT FOREST

write a name in a script

I cannot translate.

And I do not care to.

-Michael McClure

There's an art of attending to weather, to the route you take, to the land's marks along the way, to how if you turn around you can see how different the journey back looks from the journey out, to reading the sun and moon and stars to orient yourself, to the direction of running water, to the thousand things that make the wild a text that can be read by the literate. The lost are often illiterate in this language that is the language of the earth itself, or don't stop to read it.

-Rebecca Solnit

Dylan 9/15/09

2009-09-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I floated down the Green River, from Little Hole to the mouth of Little Swallow Canyon, with the BLM and various other state and federal agencies on a Bio-Blitz. There were two reasons for the trip: to eradicate teasel, and to map populations of Ute Ladies’-Tresses.

Teasel is an invasive species, introduced to North America from Europe as early as the 1700s. The plants are rather attractive in a prickly way, and are sometimes used in flower bouquets. The stems were previously used in fabric production, the thorns being used to raise a nap on wool. A single plant can produce over 2,000 seeds with up to 80% viability, so the plants quickly overwhelm other species, creating a monoculture. There are still relatively few of the plants along the Green River. An attempt is being made to remove them before they become a serious problem. Mostly, we removed the flower-heads from the plants so that they could not produce seeds. Some of the younger plants were dug out and pulled. There are plans to continue removing seed-heads, and a possibility of spraying the plants.

The Ute Ladies’-Tress is a native orchid. As a threatened species, attempts are being made to determine the full size of its population and range. It is not an especially showy flower, particularly when compared to other orchids. They blend easily into the grasses and sedges around them. However, like most things, these flowers reward closer inspection. Rooted in sodden, sometimes submerged soil on the edge of the river, the plants we charted had a spike of white, waxy flowers, rarely over six inches tall. The shape of the flowers reminded me of dragon heads on Viking ships.

Many of the people I worked with were botanists. They told me the stretch of river we were working on was in relatively good shape, considering all that had happened there. Flaming Gorge Dam altered the flow of the river and amount of silt in the water from 1958 through the present. This adversely affected the Cottonwoods, who do not reproduce as well as they once did. Tamarisk, Teasel, Russian Olive, Phragmites Bull Thistle and a non-native vetch are common, but still controllable. On the other-hand there are also healthy numbers of Buffalo Berry, American Licorice, and willows. Along the portion we floated, there was only a short stretch of private property that was overgrazed. All that grew there were Tamarisks

One of the biologists mentioned that it is sometimes nice to go places that are completely unknown to him, so that he can look at the landscape and see the beauty of the place, instead of the number of invasive, non-native weeds.

While on the trip I saw many Prong-horn, Mule Deer, Ravens, Turkey Vultures, Mergansers, Leopard Frogs, Horned Larks and Gray Jays. Also I saw Osprey, a Golden Eagle, a Coyote, Canadian Geese, Sand-hill Cranes, big Rainbow and Brown Trout swimming beneath our raft through the clear water, and a Great Blue Heron who I startled on the edge of the river in the dark. Other members of the trip saw a family of seven river otters.

The Nearer Your Destination

2009-09-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Need for Science, by Katharine Coles

—for Chris, on the anniversary of moving into our house, August 14, 1989-1994

1. Invisible Weight

[I]f appearance and essence were the same thing, there would be no need for science. —Michio Kaku

Or microscopes, telescopes, steam machines
for stripping wallpaper—remember
that bathroom, navy blooming with pink

irises the size of my head?—poetry, news
analysts, physicians, the FBI, dating
services. The perfect match, we meant

ourselves for each other, at first sight
(allowing for the collapse

of what seems no time), so made
ourselves, over,
took

each other's measure, lip-to-lip,
did not count seconds speeding up

our heartbeats, washing
over our bodies—the past emptying

out the future's rush and roar
dimmed by the sound of our breathing, the hum
of his old air conditioner, heaved

down one set of stairs, up another. Every touch
left its smudge, its slow, cumulative,
invisible weight.
We'd had to wait

an age for each other. And we had
what still looked like forever.

2. Visible Weight

By simple rotation, we can interchange any of the three spatial dimensions. Now, if time is the fourth dimension, then it is possible to make "rotations" that convert space into time and vice-versa. —Michio Kaku

If I could turn a Kenmore washer into time
I could rotate it through this door
elaborated by a Victorian mind

that wouldn't have conceived it. Or
that I would want it, a hundred-

some years down the line. I have
misread again, willfully,

not only science, but history—
it is so hot, and the machine

so unwieldy in its space,
who could blame me for reducing theory
to mere machine?
The physicists,

clucking collective tongues
recisely measured. Their voices

take just so much space in my mind.
Call it x. In time,
they'll shrink to nothing, small matter

converted into energy I could use, now,
resting my back against dusty woodwork,

while this physicist watches over his glasses.
All before we married. He considers

matters of space and time,
machine
versus merely human mind. Counts
complications. The move, the wedding: all

sooner undertaken, sooner finished.
Since then, we've learned a thing or two,
have buried friends we held,

a mother who held us. We recover
nothing: holding each other, we hold

each other's absence. We are turning
into the past. In retrospect,
I would prefer to take my time.

3. Anniversary

Newton, writing 300 years ago, thought that time beat at the same rate everywhere in the universe…. However, according to special relativity, time can beat at different rates, depending on how fast one is moving. —Michio Kaku

Another finished orbit. Recollections
past, or passing, by the time we mark

a heartbeat, a line—anniversary
and universe both contain that turn,
the rhythm we walk. Long

days rush us through
the universe, the universe
through us: another year, or the nightly throb, his pulse

against my pulse, starlight's insouciant wave
rippling the screen. The blind

flaps in arid wind, the heatwave
we confuse with
five years back, summer

beating down two years before,
repeating
a house-of-mirrors' endless trick
reflections. Hell, it's only time. The day we fell

it must have seemed to him I stood still,
my hand resting on a book, composing

my response; but my mind moved
so fast he'd have seen its blueshift
if it were a star, he a star gazer watching

space collapse between us. It must
have seemed to him, but I don't know.
We move through different spaces, different times,

the same space and time differently—
I love the distances, roughnesses,

rotations, odd warps and woofs
we travel to touch each other.
On my birthday
two years after we met we moved in here;

in between, a love at first sight
took two years to ripen

then was there. It is my birthday today.
How long has it been? we ask each other. Yesterday,
forever. The bathroom's eggshell walls

needing paint again, a couch gone dingy, paired
chairs we sit on, staring
into space: all collapse, give

way to mystery. I still love,
over time, even the damage
time has done to him, though, minute-

by-murderous-minute, he looks the same;
though we move so fast
we only seem to have stood still.

Don't I Know You From the Cinematographer's Party?

2009-09-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I coined a new aphorism: "If you can make a donut, you can make a cat."

This is not the point. The point, of course, is to talk here about the greatest and most famous of all aphorisms: "Know thyself."

Actually, no. Strike that. The point is to talk about the aphorism untold, but nevertheless present, in the previously mentioned ancient saying. What I'm trying to get at:

"Know thy place."

To ask: "Where am I?" seems to me to be more or less asking: "Who am I?" By which I mean to say that one of the ways we conceive ourselves, one of the ways that we create and then understand our identity is to know where we come from, or where we live--both the social and natural community which we are a part of.

But how? How do we know where we are? Know a place with the intimacy that will make us care about it? Or care about what it says about our own identity?

Perhaps it is an issue of seeing. Thich Nat Hahn writes: "When reality is experience in its nature of ultimate perfection, an almond tree that may be in your front yard reveals its nature in perfect wholeness. The almond tree is itself truth, reality, your own self. Of all the people who have passed by your yard, how many have really seen the almond tree? The heart of an artist may be more sensitive; hopefully he or she will be able to see the tree in a deeper way than many others. Because of a more open heart, a certain communion already exists between the artist and the tree. What counts is your own heart."

Annie Dillard after failing to draw a horse: "The point is that I just don't know what the lover knows; I just can't see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct."

So is knowing a place--seeing it--an issue of love? Must I become infatuated, falling head over heels for a place before really being able to recognize it, before being able to understand its inner qualities? And then will I know myself?

But love--true love--must of course come from true seeing. I can't fall in love with New York by watching all the movies that are set there (though probably actually filmed in a place like Winnipeg, Manitoba), can I? I've got to know what I know, not the artificial product of a secondary-source. (Though I will allow that these secondary sources can lead a person to a more authentic investigation.)

In the end, I think that to know a place you must occupy it--and only the devoted (the lover) will acheive occupancy. Only the lover will commit herself so entirely as to be able to see a place in its real self--and in turn to see herself more clearly in relation to that place.

By Andy, age 25

New Beginnings.

2009-08-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

This past week has marked a very important event for the Environmental Humanities program. Almost twenty new graduate students have embarked on the beginnings of their journeys through the program. With that in mind, many thoughts are stirred, inspired by both the conversations that we've had and by the readings that we are all enjoying.

One pressing question that was asked of us was, "is there really any wilderness left?" As an eternal optimist, I was inclined to respond in the affirmative. 'Absolutely', I thought, 'there simply has to be wilderness left in our world. If there isn't, why am I bothering with this program?'

To understand if wilderness really exists in the world, we need to define wilderness. Most conventional dictionaries define wilderness as "a wild and uninhabited area left in its natural condition". It is also defined as an "unsettled, uncultivated region left it ins natural condition" or "an extensive area, such as a desert or ocean, that is barren or empty". Finally, it is defined as "something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion".

Those definitions are loaded with paradoxes. The first definition seems pretty straight-forward, yielding an understanding of wilderness to be some kind of natural area that humans have not altered. By that definition, I am inclined to believe that wilderness still exists. However, if you consider the 'natural condition' of a place, it is more difficult to believe that wilderness exists. Alien species have conquered the world over, but I am not sure if there are still places in the world in which local ecosystems have not been inundated by even one alien species. I'd like to think that these places exist, maybe somewhere in New Guinea or on an nondescript island in the Pacific.

Another consideration is global warming. In 1870, the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas in the atmosphere was about 290 parts per million (ppm) and the mean global temperature was about 13.6 degrees Celsius, or about 56.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2009, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere measures about 385 ppm (about a seventy percent increase) and the mean global temperature hovers around 14.5 degrees Celsius, or about 58.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus, every place in the world, however wild, has been affected by humans. The flora of the world absorbs CO2, so undoubtedly, there have been chemical changes in plants that were directly caused by humans. So, apparently, there is no wilderness left; there is no place on the world that has not been affected by humans.

The third definition, likening the wilderness to something that is barren or empty, can more or less be considered as an ill-informed definition that was designed by someone who has never been to the desert or swam in the ocean. Clearly, the desert and the ocean are not barren or empty. Cyanobacteria covers the soil of many deserts, and tiny critters (some too small for us to see with the naked eye) roam through both the desert and the ocean. In the ocean, plankton and bacteria float throughout the water column, hovering in suspense with the likes of larvae and nematodes. To anyone with a brain, the desert and the ocean are clearly not barren or empty.

The final definition provided above characterizes wilderness as something of "bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion". By this definition, wilderness is definitely still very much present. Bewildering vastness can be seen in many places, from the Arctic to the Sahara, and everywhere inbetween. Luckily, vast areas exist that continue to bewilder us. Indeed, wilderness exists in the sense of peril, as humans still lose their lives in the wild, whether it's by a tiger, a shark, an unlucky fall, or by climate conditions that exceed our tolerance range. Finally, unchecked profusion remains, at least, for now. There are still parts of the world that are not managed, and abundant life remains. These places are dwindling, but they do, indeed, exist.

After considering numerous definitions of wilderness and contemplating whether or not it still exists, I remain the eternal optimist. For us in the Environmental Humanities program, it is essential that it exists. I thrive on the wild; I am most at home when nestled up to a warm red rock at the end of the day, or swimming next to a sea turtle. That is my home, in the wilderness. It exists very much in my mind, in my experiences, in my desires, in my dreams, and in my future career.

The key is to embrace the wilderness. It needs to be appreciated. It needs to be explored (carefully). After all, the theme for our Tertulia class is "wild". So, we students of the program, let us embrace both our inner wild and the wilderness. Let us thrive on the wonders of the wilderness.

Written by Lindsy Floyd.

Internship Opportunity

2009-08-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Here is some more information about the internship available with Salt Lake City's Division of Sustainability:

IMMEDIATE POSITION – Education and Enforcement Specialist

Works primarily with the Recycling Program Manager and Outreach Coordinator identifying barriers to recycling in the community. Educates residents about the city's recycling program and what is recyclable. Specialist will engage residents at home and at special events. Saturday availability is required for assistance in outreach at events and farmer's markets. Multidisciplinary position with opportunities to assist with projects relative to climate change, sustainable transportation, food security, waste reduction, open space and energy. Strong communication skills required.
Please send resumes and cover letters to Bridget.Stuchly@slcgov.com

I hope to be working with one of you soon!

-Jack

U Car Share

2009-08-18T15:52:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,

U Car Share began operation in Salt Lake City today. Check out their website www.ucarshare.com for more info. If it sounds like something you would like to participate in, they are waiving the $25 signup fee for a short period if you use promotion code: SLCSHARE.

Enjoy!

-Jack

Environmental Humanities and Summer Times

2009-08-05T09:32:00.001-07:00

Thoughts on a Summer in Our Environment:

In a few weeks the school bell will ring and I will be back in the hallowed halls of graduate school. I have mixed emotions about this upcoming adventure. After a year in the Environmental Humanities program I have an idea of what to expect and have a refined perspective on the world that I am surrounded by, which leads me to my short rant.

This summer saw me through the rapids of Cataract Canyon, chocolate drops of the Maze District, environmental education at Rowland Hall, and the north woods of Minnesota. These divergent places are connected through my experience. Experience that opened my mind and now offer memories to draw upon this semester.
Cataract Canyon: Thoughts of the moon glow over the Colorado River while we camped at Brown Betty come to mind. The brownish flood stage waters turned silverywhite as they slipped over the submerged boulders. The torrent that is illuminated in the day is tempered by the light of the moon in the night.
Maze District: The complete and utter desolation of a place that is still real, unpaved, and unpasteurized.
Environmental Education: Being continually reminded of the fascination that children have for their natural world. These days included delays as a rolly polly crosses the path of small feet, snail races on park signs, and the faith in a planted seed.
Northern Minnesota: A place where eagles abound, lakes are clear and natural, and the stars still shine.

It was/is an amazing summer and I wish she would stay for a few more short months. Do you care to share any summer stories? What about feelings toward the beginning of a new semester?

ecology of residency 09

2009-06-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

As I shake the sand from my journal, images of Cataract Canyon and the unceasing Colorado River flood back to me. I am exhausted and restored. The heat and the river eroded my pride and reminded me of what it is like to be in the land. For six days and five nights, twelve unique bodies and minds experienced the beauty and power of this harsh riparian environment in a course called “Ecology of Residency.”
Pens worked well until sand worked its way into the mechanisms. Slowly, individuals evolved to pencils and a sharp knife. We even painted with them. Look deeply into the land and you can look deeply into the mind.
Like ants, we bumbled our way across the landscape along the trail of our ancestors. We carried our loads and held out our gifts as offerings to our tribe. We met other tribes along the way. Land tribes had strange wheels, some two some four, and they bumbled their way along the path, too.
Last day, the wind pushed hard against our barge and Lake Powell waters swallowed the current. The river clung to us reluctant to let us pass. Someone said “It is as if the river doesn’t want to let us go.” I wonder if the heron, the raven, and the vulture aren’t lonely for us and curious to see us pass. They come out and stand on store, staring at us with dark, archaic eyes. Others wave to us from the cliff sides.

My bath water turns a pale version of the Colorado River. Submerge. Remember. I would like to think the river eroded some of my rougher edges, and it probably did, but I still feel the edge, like a limestone—rich in memories with sharp edges.

Muting One's Voice

2009-05-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

"Muting one's own voice for some years to listen to the stories of others can be a golden path to understanding."
Carole Gallagher (1993)

apocalyptic narrative

2009-05-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

New game: Where's Waldo going to go now?
Novel: Goodnight Everything
heard on Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me (KCPW, Utah, May 3, 2009).
Hello, out there.

Artemis

julia butterfly hill - my hero

2009-04-29T14:50:00.001-07:00

link to a recent julia butterfly hill interview thought you might be interested

"catching up with...Julia Butterfly Hill:"

One of the great lessons I learned in the tree-sit is that it's important to know your truth and speak your truth. But it's also important to know when not to speak. There's a time to listen and be silent.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/16/DDPQ16TJPC.DTL

cut and paste url in address bar

2009-04-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

EH students were treated to a discussion with David Weiss whose documentary on the nuclear energy can be viewed at www.everythingnuclear.org.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER*

*but were afraid to ask

Today, many people are concerned with planning our energy needs for the future, and for the first time in decades, there are proposals to increase the production of nuclear power.

In order to make good choices for the future, we need to understand not only the present situation, but also learn from our past.

We hope you will take the time to watch this documentary—in whole, or in parts—and will come to a better understanding of why nuclear power is not the solution to climate change or our energy needs.

2009-04-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sustainability. What does it mean to you? How is your lifestyle sustainable? How is it unsustainable? What are you doing to make your lifestyle more sustainable (or not) and why? Is sustainability realizable or is the price of sacrifice too high?

des

worldchanging

2009-04-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

Magpie woman turned me on to this great website of independent journalists, designers, and thinkers covering the world's most intelligent solutions to today's problems.

this is a go-to source for forward thinking, solutions-based journalism that takes a big-picture look approach to sustainability.

Are you ready to change the world?

www.worldchanging.com

Change your mind, change the world.

desi

Can Poetry Save the Earth?

2009-04-13T05:46:00.001-07:00

Today's "Morning Edition" program on NPR featured a report on Can Poetry Save the Earth?, an anthology edited by John Felstiner, a Stanford university professor. We haven't spent much time discussing the literary band of the Environmental Humanities spectrum this year--and I found this feature a great reminder that EnvHum isn't all nuclearism, ethnography, and theory.

The interviewer asked if Felstiner thought if there was one poem that could help save the earth if more people knew it--and without hesitation he chose "The Well Rising" by William Stafford. He cites the humility and non-prescriptive tone of the poem, along with the idea of individual personal responsibility: "I place my feet with care in such a world."

Hear the feature and a reading of the poem at

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472&ps=cprs

Before the memory fades

2009-04-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Here are a few shots from our Snow Canyon field trip, March 27-29. Even though I'm pretty sure every one of us suffered a few qualms about camping while there are so many books to be read and papers to be written, there seemed to be no apparent difficulties with falling into laid back camp life.

After a short debate about where best to place tents, we took off for self-paced explorations before dinner time.

Personally, I found it most excellent to have Navajo domes underfoot again. It had been way too long. This is Rachel and Ryan as we attempted to track Drew, Katy, Jack, and Lilly, who had disappeared from sight, engendering an extremely literary discussion of Western outlaw lore regarding successful evasion of capture.

Some creatures are easier to track, even though they have not lived here for quite some time. These are the tracks of large aquatic dinosaurs, captured in mud millennia ago and preserved in sandstone until eroded free by wind and water, according to the informational sign posted by the Bureau of Land Management.

Other BLM signage was not so informative.

My favorite riddle of the trip. Why does a privy need solar power?

Answer found inside.

Other highlights not pictured:

The "one match, no paper" campfire starting contest handily won by Jack, with Diane claiming an honorable mention for not requiring a pocketknife to make shavings for tinder.

And my personal favorite--the campfire cultural initiation of Ryan into the wonders of S'mores!

Indies Choice Book Awards

2009-04-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is a long link, but somewhere down near the bottom Terry has been nominated for Most Engaging Author (The author who is an in-store star with a strong sense of the importance of indie booksellers to their local communities.) Seems fitting. I think only booksellers can vote, though.

http://news.bookweb.org/news/6636.html

Get out and give us more money!

2009-04-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

Although the issues aren't quite environmental, the sentiment is surely there. This feature appeared on my hometown tv station today:

http://www.kmvt.com/news/local/42291897.html

Wallace Stegner said in The American West as Living Space, "Never mind the federal aid highways, and the federally financed dams, and the write-offs against flood control, and the irrigation water delivered at a few dollars an acre foot. Take for granted federal assistance, but damn federal control. Your prsence as absentee landlord offends us, Uncle. Get out, and give us more money."

It appears that the old school values of the American West live on. In Idaho.

HR 875

2009-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I was just forwarded this petition to stop HR 875. It supposedly endangers small organic farmers and community gardens. I haven't had a chance to read the whole bill yet, so I can't attest to the accuracy of this site, but I thought some of you may be interested.

http://www.leavemyfoodalone.org (Click on "Learn More" to read the whole bill).

Jack

Eco-Housing and Utah Lands

2009-03-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

Below is a link to an article about housing made from old shipping containers. It's pretty amazing what they are able to do.
The Daily Green

And another about the House lands bill that seems to be a pretty positive step for Utah. Not sure if this is what you went to DC to support, Des, but sounds kind of like it. Can you trust Deseret News?
Deseret News

Typo Edit

2009-03-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

Oops typo. Keynote speaker is Majora* Carter.

Salt Lake Sustainable Building Confrence

2009-03-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard, the 4th Annual Salt Lake Sustainable Building Conference is a week from Tuesday, April the 7th at the Salt Palace. It should be a pretty interesting day, I especially can't wait to hear Major Carter speak.

If you are interested, students can register for $30 with the promotional code "STUD" (case sensitive) and save $45. I heard that student registrations are limited so you may want to register as soon as you decide you are going to ensure a spot.

For more info: www.saltlakesbc.com

-Jack

Obama's Cap and Trade Plan

2009-03-17T06:04:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is enjoying their Spring break! I am not sure if everyone is having too much fun to check the blog, but I figure I'll give it a shot.

I have been following Obama's cap and trade plan and I would like to know what everyone thinks of the proposal. Is it what Nordhaus and Shellenberger were recommending? Does it address the most critical issues of climate change? Should it be postponed while the economic crisis is addressed?

Here are a couple links with some more information:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_11/b4123022554346.htm

-Jack

Everything is Fine, No One is Happy

2009-03-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

How do you define progress? This is a simple question with no simple answers. It seems that we are driven to progress with all of the choices we make. Whether it is taking the promotion, buying the nicer car, or bigger house - it seems that progress is the root of these decisions.

I have attached two links that should provide some food for thought. The questions that I am grappling with are:
1. Generally speaking - Why are Americans so unhappy?
2. How important is it to be happy?
3. How can we all be happy when we all have a different idea of what it takes to be happy?
4. If we are happy, does this mean that we will take a different perspective on all that sustains us?
The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard offers a quick, concise and accessible take on our current state of consumption. www.storyofstuff.com

Everything is Fine, No One is Happy - Just in case this link doesn't work I have added the address here. This one is a lot of fun and gives a little perspective on how disenchanted we have all become. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Finally, in light of the stimulus package to prop up our struggling economy - that I will benefit from due to purchasing a home this year. Would it be so bad to let it all whither and die and remake itself in a newer and more sustainable manner? I cannot advocate for such a situation because I don't understand what the ramifications would be, but I also wonder why the mode of progress always falls on the bottom line of an earnings report. What about big "N" - nature progress, regarding the stuff that really sustains us? We are environment and unquestionably a part of Nature and this is the stimulus package we all need.

Small Steps: Political Cartoons

2009-03-02T09:48:00.001-08:00

When Barack Obama was elected there was an outpouring of positive press. The political cartoon artists were on board as well. If you are feeling especially ambitious, why not submit a political cartoon?

Small Steps: Write an Editorial

2009-03-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

The great American newspaper is on the ropes. It is seeing readership shrink an astounding amount in the past ten years. News sites on the Internet contribute to the loss of interest in the printed word. Growing up in rural Montana posed a problem to my dream of delivering newspapers on my bicycle. The roads were rutted and distances too great to cover in the morning hours before dawn. These facts did not completely discourage my dream, and many sleep-overs in town began with a Saturday morning delivery session with a friend. This friend taught me the art of the end over end toss with just enough on it to land on the porch, but to not hit the door. Quietly, we would pedal along, one hand on the handlebars and the other fishing and tossing papers as we went along. Finally we would reach the end of the route and pedal home to breakfast, fingers covered in black newsprint, and stomachs grumbling.

Were it not for newspapers I would not have this experience. Were it not for newspapers we would not have the opportunity to voice our opinion, and to be published! Yes, the hallowed ground of the academy may frown upon the Editorial page as mere drivel. No, you will probably not gain any ground on your path to tenure, but you will be talking to America. In Foundations class we discuss how to reach out from the ivory tower of the academy and inform decisions about resource use.

Why not write an editorial? I know you think you don't have time, but do it anyway.

Salt Lake Tribune: E-mail: letters@sltrib.com

Antelope Island and Western Soundscapes

2009-02-22T16:47:00.001-08:00

Four of us had a wonderful and unexpected trip out to Antelope Island this Saturday with Terry Tempest Williams. We did some bird-watching, marveled at the emptiness, and attempted-some better than others-to follow in Powell's footsteps and do some mapping. I think we all grew a bit more appreciative of the difficulty and intricacy of the work that he and other early topographers completed.

One of the highlights for the trip was being privileged to see the arrival of hundreds of trumpeter swans to the Great Salt Lake for a rest on their yearly migration. It was pretty incredible as they arrived, flock after flock.

I was recently forwarded an email about the Western Soundscapes project being undertaken by the library. They are recording and archiving a collection of sounds unique to the West, recognizing the "vital connection between places and their soundscapes". They currently have recordings representative of more than 70% of western bird species, plus lots of amphibians, mammals, and reptiles. They also have a special project focusing on preserving the sounds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I've posted the links below of the Western Soundscapes Project, as well as to several of the specific bird species we saw at Antelope Island, although I couldn't find a recording of the chucker or the whistling wind that kept us chilled, and a few others that I particularly enjoyed. The Trumpeter Swan recording has a great bit of the flapping wings that Terry described. It's a fascinating website, and I recommend poking around.

The Western Soundscapes Archive

Trumpeter Swan

Rough-legged Hawk

Northern Pintail

California Gull

Canada Goose

Arctic Fox

ANWR Ice Cracking

Question about new legislation

2009-02-20T12:28:00.000-08:00

I noticed that the Utah Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Standing Committee introduced bill H.B 241 which repeals a section Section 73-3-21, "Priorities between appropriators."

That section reads :

Appropriators shall have priority among themselves according to the dates of their respective appropriations, so that each appropriator shall be entitled to receive his whole supply before any subsequent appropriator shall have any right; provided, in times of scarcity, while priority of appropriation shall give the better right as between those using water for the same purpose, the use for domestic purposes, without unnecessary waste, shall have preference over use for all other purposes, and use for agricultural purposes shall have preference over use for any other purpose except domestic use.

This seems like a step in the right direction, but I am pretty clueless when it comes to these matters. Anyone have any insight? Is this a good or a bad thing?

Thanks,

-Jack

Life After Money

2009-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

The article Jack posted brings up some interesting thoughts, and links nicely with the discussion we started in Tertulia on Thursday. In light of that discussion, here is some food for thought:

The article describes how we have commoditized everything that sustains us and everything that makes life worth living, from food to resources to arts and entertainment. When true financial crisis hits (which the article seems to find inevitable), “the reverse process [will] begin in earnest – [removing] things from the realm of goods and services, and [returning] them to the realm of gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing.” The author believes that “people will help each other and real communities will reemerge." But I wonder how realistic that belief is. Will this “gift culture” re-develop? Is it even possible for it to come back? People talk of general communal support during the Depression, but are times too different now? I think Steve’s point that widespread hardship decreases shame, produces a greater sense of communal suffering, and therefore invites more communal sharing is valid, but the situation is quite different here than in was in the 1930s. In this globalized, digitized, privatized, competitive world, have we lost too much of any sense of community for it to rebound in times of need?

At one point, the author states that “anything we do to protect some natural or social resource from conversion into money will both hasten the collapse and mitigate its severity.” Anyone who can make their own clothes, provide their own shelter, grow their own food, not only decreases economic growth by refusing to commoditize those services, but also stands a better chance of surviving when economic collapse does hit. But is it moral to hasten that collapse? Do we have any obligation to shopowners, seamstresses, carpenters, or chefs to share our wealth with them through spending money on their services? Perhaps, in the long term, the collapse of a money-based economy and return to a service-exchange economy would be beneficial for people and the earth, but I don’t think the transition would be easy, and it could disproportionately hurt certain populations. The wall-street gurus who make their money trading stocks would (in a money-less world) be left penniless, and with no skills to barter. As would the accountants, the bank clerks, and the IRS staffers. And there is always the question of how a government would run with no money… Of course, the author is not advocating for a purely barter system, but even minor changes in our established system would have drastic results, results that are incredibly difficult to predict across time and society.

It is an interesting thought experiment, though, to imagine how you would stand if money suddenly ceased to exist. How would you provide for yourself? What skills or gifts could you exchange? What social networks can you count on that are not “vehicles for the conversion of life into money”? Allowing your perspective to shift thinking in terms of what you can give, “what can you contribute to a more beautiful world?”

These are intense questions even outside of a monetary conversation, and ones that I think could provoke some interesting changes if people really examined them. Particularly the idea of contributing to a “more beautiful world.” Even in a money based world in which all things are seen only as dollar signs, if everyone chose to do one thing simply because it made a more beautiful world, I doubt we’d be in quite as many of the predicaments we are now.

(Happily, I think our own little EH community actually has a pretty fair shot of making it if money goes poof: Diane can knit us clothes, Drew can sew us tents and sleeping bags, Ryan can cook, I’ll bake, Jack can keep people from stealing our stuff, and Desiree can prospect for oil and coal. We’re set. )

Interesting Article.

2009-02-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

I hope I am not stepping on anyone's toes, but I happened upon an interesting article and thought I'd share it with you.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization

Enjoy!

-Jack

My paper and a press response

2009-02-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Remember I publish an article on a national scale newspaper about 3 weeks ago. I wrote that paper because a group of lawmakers and developers urge to create a new national park in my country. They think building parks can promote ecotourism and increase employment opportunities. To oppose their argument, I drop my article to reject their argument and also to support local indigenous tribes.

Yesterday one of the lawmakers sent a message through the press. Clearly it is a response to my article and many other tribal voices. She demonises indigenous people as destroyers of nature who only know how to earn money from their mountain farms. On the contrary, non-native people are more ecological because they know the value of the forest and are willing to protect the environment.

To be honest, I feel bad when I know my paper causes such negative response and the lawmaker’s response indeed hurt indigenous people. I also understand it is not correct to plant fruit and vegetables in the mountain areas. But who put those natives in the farm fifty years ago? It is non-natives like me.

Perhaps I should write another paper to remind those lawmakers and developers that “national parks are not national parking lot.” If they care about the land, there are still many things they can contribute.

Painting of a Rice Cake

2009-02-14T22:30:00.000-08:00

I ponder the relationship between the real place and its representation. Maybe Master Dogen’s discussion is helpful in making connection of the three.

An ancient Buddha said “A painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger.” Dogen comments:

“There are few who have even seen this ‘painting of a rice cake’ and none of them has thoroughly understood it.”

“The paints for painting rice cake are the same as those used for painting mountains and waters.”

“If you say the painting is not real, then the entire phenomenal universe and the empty sky are nothing but a painting.”

“Since this is so, there is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. Without painted hunger you never become a true person.”

Eihei Dogen (A.D. 1200-1253) is a Japanese Zen Buddhist. In many of his teachings and discussions, he is excelled in using non-logical ways of thinking (in other words, to break the fixed logics/theories) to reach enlightenment. In the quoted passages, he demonstrates how phenomenal world and representation are related to each other. As EH community members, are we aware of our hunger?

Too often we are possessed by binary oppositions and our ways of thinking are regulated by theories created by academic disciplines. Sometimes it is inspirational when we read some non-mainstream writings. Moon in a Dewdrop is a good translated work in which a reader can see Dogen’s practice of non-dualist thinking. Western readers might encounter some cultural barrier in the process of reading, but it is fun to try. I recommend the chapter of “Painting of a Rice cake.” This short chapter helps us to locate our positions between physical realities and their representations (for example, natural writings). Believe it or not, I use the key idea of the chapter as a theoretical framework to read Silko’s Ceremony rather than using postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, or other mainstream theories.

It's quite simple, really.

2009-02-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here's everything there is to know about our Tertulia discussion last Thursday.
(click on photo for full-screen view)

Fast is good?

2009-02-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

Probably no one can deny that technology exists almost everywhere, and it is so influential in every aspect of our everyday living. Somehow technology creates a culture attempting to pull people into the fast-moving current. I wonder if the following observation can be my exercise of ethnography.

Last night I was too tired to read or work; therefore I decided to spend the night with my wife. We sat on the sofa watching television. Amazing enough! It seemed that all channels were displaying commercials and the Internet and 3G commercials appeared most frequently. I discovered that all communication commercials emphasized on FAST and SPEED. One commercial even came with the slogan, “Fast is good!” Others stressed on the comprehensiveness of network coverage. An hour later, I switch off the television because I could not stand the commercials.

After I cut off the power, I pondered for a while and could not help questioning, “Why is wrong if I refuse to be slow?” and “Why do communication providers in both Taiwan and the U.S. all compete each other with speed and coverage on television commercials?” I think communication technology creates a culture forcing/attracting people to chase speed rather than success itself. If someone chooses to be fast, then I have to be fast too; otherwise going slower than other people means failure.

But if I want to win and therefore push the fast-forward bottom button in order to be fast, what kind of life will I have? To save time for cooking, I eat fast food. I eat it fast because I do not have time for dinning. To save time for researching, I use google rather than the library. To save time for everything; therefore I have to skim everything. When FAST becomes a universal value, it becomes a monoculture too. When wireless network gives us freedom to connect to the net, it also becomes a net that traps us with e-mails, messages and information. Worst of all, what if everyone celebrates such value and attempts to colonialize the world with it (singing “Joy to the world as virus spreads like peanut butter on the bread. Every moment is schizophrenic!”).

If you have seen the commercials, do you agree with “fast is good?” As Diane discussed fast boom economy in Tertulia last night, I was thinking about another passage in Wilkinson’s The Eagle Bird, “We are losing the West, both the slowmoving, uncluttedered way of life and the spirituality that lies thick and sweet over every river, every high divide, every big expanse of open sagebrush range” (186). Personally the slowmoving way of life reminds me of my childhood. It was a time when alarm clock is rare in my country so we woke up when roosters’ crying broke the dawn. Telephone was not popular so we communicate with letters. We wrote calligraphy slowly and patiently because we believe it is an essential comportment of a sincere letter.

Wilkinson’s words also inspire me to rethink the definition of both modernity and developed country. If we grade how modern a country is through the standard of its Internet services, speed and coverage, should we also look into its medical care and health insurance system to see how long dose it take to save a dying patient or how many people are covered by insurance? If we define a developed, developing or underdeveloped country through its GNP, should we also measure the country’s index of happiness before we label it?

After watching those commercials and reading Wilkinson’s passage, we can choose to follow the current, resist it, or remain open. But it is a possibility for me, choosing a slower pace rather then living in the schizophrenic moments. C'est la vie!

participating? yes, no, or both?

2009-02-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

I’m not crazy (ok, maybe I am). Remember we discussed “Qualitative Research Methods” in Filed Methods on Tuesday? I found an interesting passage, “Stated a little differently, observing without participating may inhibit researchers’ ability to adequately understand the complex, lived experience of human beings” (4). By “participating” the author seems to indicate that one cannot avoid essentialism in research. But in the filed of literary research, “participating” is usually regarded too personal and not objective. I remember there was a very intensive debate between professors and students in my former department. Should an ecocritic keep a close distance with physical nature (for instance, going to the woods very often or becoming an experienced hiker), or stay away from it? One professor popped up a question to support his argument, “Do you have to be a woman in order to study feminism?”

What is your opinion of actually participating a fieldwork or personally involved in an issue in your own research? Is it necessary for academic researches, or it depends on disciplines? Maybe EH professors and other senior students can join this discussion too! (Now I have a picture of the geographer in The Little Prince in my head.)

Small Steps

2009-02-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

In addition to choosing energy efficient appliances, or turning off the lights or other electronic products, do you know there is one more thing you can do to save electricity?

Removing plug from the socket is a good way to save energy. According to International Energy Agency’s research, although appliances have been turned off, they still consume electricity. In the developed countries, the unplugged appliances occupy 3% to 11% of the entire energy consumption. Therefore unplugging appliances when they are not in use saves both your bill and the earth. A small step, even you can do it!

Lantern Festival and a riddle game

2009-02-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

Lantern Festival is an important cultural event for Chinese people. When it arrives, it also indicates the last day of Chinese New Year Vacation. On the fifteenth of the first month of our lunar calendar, the entire family members always have rice ball soup together. Later, everyone carries a lantern and walks to the town center where riddle contest is held.

Today is Lantern Festival. I don’t have rice ball soup for you but I would like to share a riddle with you. What is this poem about? Can you identify the poet? Ah! Do you see any “I” in the poem?

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving

Dry enough to keep you honest

Prickly enough to make you tough

Green enough to go on living

Old enough to give you dreams

Fellow-up deer topic

2009-02-08T19:48:00.000-08:00

Comparing with bears or wolves, it is easier to protect deer maybe they are not carnivores. Today I would like to discuss Formosan sambar, the largest native herbivore in my country. Before immigrants arrived, there were a lot of Formosan sambars, Formosan sika deer, and Formosan barking deer. This is why many places have deer-related names, such as Lugang (Deer Port) or Luye (Uncultivated wilderness for deer). With destruction of habits and commercial hunting, Formosan sambars retreated from plains to deep mountains. Today the only way to see them is to hike for several days to the alpine areas. Many research projects also target on this species. One of my friends is a wild life photographer, and his and his team even camped in the mountain for one year in order to research those endangered species. I never hear Muir deer’s sound (maybe they are too shy and quiet), but you can go to the site and listen to their sound. Male and female basically have the same sound. http://archive.zo.ntu.edu.tw/english/mamm_sound.asp?mamm_id=M0061

Due to the lack of predators, Formosan sambars’ population is slowly and stably increasing. It is a great achievement for conservation; however it is an alarm for some protected plants. Two years ago, I saw the leaves of Rhododendron pseudochrysanthum (RP) were disappeared when I went a big hike; therefore I asked my indigenous guide for explanation. “Formosan sambars eat all the leaves,” said the guide. He further explained that it was a sign of overgrazing. Formosan sambars will usually avoid eating the leaves of RP for the plant contains some toxins (but the sambars can suffer it). The sambars will not eat RP unless they have no other choices. The overgrazing problem has become a hot potato for the authority.

I wonder if there were any similar cases in the U.S. What would you do if you were the authority of conservation?

Muir deer in West Village

2009-02-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

Seeing wild mammals is not a usual experience in my country. If you want to see Formosan Macaque (Macaca cyclopis), you have to take Taipei metro rapid transit to the trailhead and then hike for an hour. You can usually see the monkeys jumping on the trees at dawn or at dusk. Seeing large mammals is even more difficult. You have to drive for more than 6-9 hours to trailheads and hike for one or two days. Then you can see large mammals such as Formosan Sambar (Cervus unicolor swinhoei).

Seeing wild mammals in residential areas is a very unique experience for a foreign student. One day on my way to school, I saw some droppings on the sidewalk. With chocolate-ball like shape, I knew who the producers were. Unfortunately I never had any opportunity to see those four-legged people. Two weeks later, I wanted to have some fresh air so I took a walk around my apartment. When I almost reached Foodhill Drive, I saw something, no, many things moving under the tree shades. I immediately ran back to my apartment to grab my camera. Finally I saw those “chocolate ball producers!”

They walked with grace and ease on the snow. They looked so lazy but they were very agile when they had to escape from the predators. I guessed they were here probably because they couldn’t find enough grass in the mountain. I sat on the grass for hours observing how they ate and walked, and how they listened to and watched strangers like me. It was worthy to spend an afternoon with those four-legged people for they wouldn’t stay here for the entire season.

I took some footages and photos and showed them to my wild life photographer friend. He has been working on Formosan Sambar documentary project for 3 years. He could not believe that deer actually strolled in the residential areas!

I would like to share the footages and photos with you. Look at their tails! Aren’t they adorable?

Footages:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rQA7L7eDw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evcnnpn8yU4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUGeXYNlKpY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlIjGn6kCHA

Album:
http://album.blog.yam.com/kokopelle&folder=5542608

For tomorrow, I want to tell you some stories about Formosan Sambar.

Recommend a book

2009-02-04T21:20:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of ecocritics. Some critics only live in the textual world, and avoiding essentialism is their doctrine. Others concern about texts too, but they also look for connections with the secular world. We touched this issue in Field Methods class when we talked about the relationship between ecocriticism and environment on Tuesday.

Now I would like to recommend this book:

Slovic, Scott. Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2008.

This book is an “ecological” edition of Edward Said’s “Secular Criticism” in which Prof. Slovic argues that ecocritics, instead of limiting themselves in the textual boundary, they “need contact not just with literature and not just with each other, but with the physical world” (30). The author uses an understandable language to explain what ecocriticism is to the ordinary readers. I think this book gives ecocriticism a dynamic new look.

I write this blog for a reason. Since we are taking different courses, and we will be required to read various books/essays. (Or you can recommend your favorite extracurricular works.) Maybe we can select some environmental related readings, write very short introductions, and then put the publication entries and the introductions on our EH blog. Guess what? We will have our own annotated bibliography for EH students! I’m not sure if this suggestion will work or not, but we can try it.

You can blog!

2009-02-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

Today I would like to share my experience of blogging. Unlike like making a personal webpage, creating a blog is easy because you don’t have to learn HTML before you start your own blog. I don’t know anything about web editing but I can create my own blog. Most blog service providers have various templets for the user. All you have to do is to select your favorite templet and then make some minor changes, for instance adding a picture to make your blog more personalized.

As for what kind of content you would like to put on your blog? The sky is the limit. It is like keeping diary. The only difference is you write your stories with keyboard. You can write about how you feel when you just finish a good book. You can write about a family trip. Creative writing is excellent too! The content of your blog can be casual; it can be serious too. Some people even put their academic papers on their blogs.

With the advance of technology, it seems to me that almost everyone is electronically connected. Blog today becomes a medium to connect people or to form a community. You can meet people who share the same interest with you. For instence, I am interested in national park and native people issues; therefore I spend some time searching for some related information during the winter break. Believe it or not, I found a blog containing a lot of information about this issue. Later, to my surprise, I realized the blog owner is an indigenous with a MS degree in ecology. Most importantly, he is a higher official in one of our national park in Taiwan. Since then our conversation never ends. I believe building interpersonal connection is very important for EH students, and blog can help you do it!

In this digital, blog is your business card telling people your identity and your personality. Blog is also a good tool for education too. Many teachers create blogs for asynchronous learning of their courses. Blog is also a space to archive your memory with words, and you can laugh at your awkward sentences 5 years later. You don’t have to keep the blog everyday. But when you feel you have to write, blog is your choice.

Here is my blog: http://blog.yam.com/kokopelle

I hope you can have your own blog in the near future so that we can form an EH blog community.

Small Steps

2009-02-02T14:28:00.000-08:00

When I am reading some books and essays about the water issues of the West, those readings trigger my worry of the drought (because we had a very serious drought in the northern part of Taiwan many years ago). Taipei Water Department always reminds people 有水當思無水之苦. It is a Chinese saying meaning “One has to consider the sufferings without the water when his or she still has plenty of water.” In our everyday life, there are many small steps that can help us live in a green way.

Well, toilet consumes a lot of water. My apartment’s toilet is an old system; therefore it is not a water-saving toilet. To make my toilet waste less water, I learn a useful skill from the department’s commercial.

1. Find an empty plastic bottle larger than 1 liter.

2. Fill the bottle with water, and make sure there is no air in the bottle (so that it will not float up in the tank). The bottle will still float even it is "almost" full.

3. Remove the tank cover, and put the bottle in the tank.

4. Cover the tank and you are done.

My juice bottle is 1.75L. It means I can save 1.75L of water when I flush. Think about it: how much water you can save whenever you use your improved toilet! At the same time, you can also recycle the used bottle. Isn't it a win-win situation?

Small steps, great contributions to the earth.

Ecocriticsim

2009-02-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

We are going to discuss ecocriticism in Field Methods class this week. This recent-emergent literary discourse is new to most of us. The assigned readings provide us an outline that helps us understand this new discipline. Here I would like offer you some extra information about ecocriticism to give you a concrete picture about the discipline.

1. The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE): An academic association of ecocriticism. If you want to know what scholars are doing in this discipline, you can check their conference program archive (http://www.asle.org/site/conferences/biennial/archives/). I think it is a good way to understand a discipline.

2. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE): an academic journal published by ASLE. With an emphasis of literary and cultural studies, it explores the human-nature relation. It is a very useful resource if you aim to take environmental literature as your professional goal. Here is their website: http://www.oxfordjournals.com/our_journals/isle/about.html

3. International scope: Well, one of my former department’s research focuses is ecocriticsim. We have biennial international conferences on ecological discourse. You can download our conference proceedings at http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tfex/e/index.htm to understand what people are interested in outside the U.S. We had a conference last year and the greatest contribution of the conference was the birth of ASLE Taiwan, Republic of China!

If you have any comments of ecocriticism or if you have any additional information about the discipline, you are welcome to add your fellow-up discussions.

2009-01-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

Two EH students on winter hike see young moose browse on Gambel Oak above University of Utah during winter break. Photographed near ridge below Mt. Wire and above Red Butte Garden.

inspire me

2008-12-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, I would like to know what texts (articles, books, etc.) you have read this semester in the environmental humanities that inspired, informed, or surprised you. Please feel free to send me email off the blog: plutynski@philosophy.utah.edu. Thank you! Anya

breakthrough

2008-12-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

Thank you all for a great Tertulia discussion last night -
I have another quick note about the passage that we talked about, specifically - "a vision of the common good, principally a new social contract appropriate for our post industrial economy" (213)

I think that this ties in with the discussion we had two nights ago with Leslie Francis "Global Systemic Problems and Interconnected Duties." Her argument related to "genuinely systemic" problems where one group can effectively undo the advances made by another group. I think that this new social contract must consider all socioeconomic levels and all global areas. I will venture to say that this level of consideration is easier said than done.

Drew

Tertulia Cooking

2008-11-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

The menu: ryan's pork stew with tofu and bread rolls. then, roast turkey breast and stuffing muffins [apple/onion], with cranberries and spinach salad. red wine and white wine.

attendees: drew and jessie; diane; desiree; ryan and kate; steve and kathy. dogs: hershey and sadie.

assignment: add to the blog.

We Have A Winner

2008-11-20T04:32:00.000-08:00

Peter Matthiessenn receieved the National Book Award for Shadow Country last night. Here's a link to the New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/books/20awards.html

And to think he was a passenger in my little Subaru just last week! Maybe some writer-magic rubbed off on me.

Pre-Thanksgiving at Steve's House

2008-11-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

Tertulia class will be enjoying company and sustenance at Steve's house this Friday. Please bring a dish to share and beverage to consume.

It seems that we 'first years' only started this adventure a month or two ago, but we will soon have a whole semester under our belt. It is amazing how fast the time goes. I remember when Steve said "these two years will go really fast - make the best of them." Well, here we are with so much to be thankful for.

Graduate Assistant Office Space

2008-11-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

It looks like Natalie was able to secure some office space for those who have not been assigned already. Contact her at natalie.montoya@utah.edu to let her know that you need office space.

Subhankar and Peter Visit Environmental Humanities

2008-11-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

The day has finally come for Subhankar Banarjee, photographer and activist - and Peter Matthiessen, author of "Shadow Country" to visit the Salt Lake community. The event is going to be held in the Main Library and I expect a full house. The doors open at 6:00 p.m. and the event begins at 7:00 p.m. This event is a wonderful opportunity to catch a glimpse of two incredible individuals who are fighting the good fight.

I have also had an opportunity to take a class with Subhankar this semester. Other than the long hours, 11:50 to 5:00 on Friday and 8:00 to 5:00 on Saturday the class has provided an opportunity to learn about the idea of land as home from a person who has been working on the ground in the Arctic for 8 years. Subhankar has a wonderful perspective and is humble and inspiring at the same time.

Environmental Humanities

Chasms of Denial

Area Cats Discover Rare New Tatum

Lost Generation

Interesting Discussion Topic for Story's Class Tonight

UPDATE: The Cove

cheesy olive-y bread-y recipe

If you have not heard...

In light of this theme, I’ve come across a list of tips on How to Write Ethnographic Field Notes.

SLC Critical Mass Public Transport

Hello Everyone,

literary journal worth checking out

H2Oil: animation

KUER: Rangers Make the Case for Dark Skies (2009-12-09)

Guerilla Dinners

Red Rock Wilderness

Beginnings and Endings

Thanksgiving Inversion Hike

"In The Tunnels You Can Actually Walk On Stars"

Family and Community

Confessions of an off-road outlaw

Happy Campers

Wisdom

Science/Philosophy

New Found Music

for trees.

I've had some music running through my head.

Final National Parks

National Parks Cont.

National Parks

Imagine

Identification

La Mariposa: Butterfly Woman

Andy Ross

Identity

Immersion

Impermanence

Neozoon...fur coat graffiti

Boundary in Human/Non-Human Relations

"Wilderness is the red carpet to Socialism"

The Nearer Your Destination

—for Chris, on the anniversary of moving into our house, August 14, 1989-1994

Don't I Know You From the Cinematographer's Party?

New Beginnings.

Internship Opportunity

U Car Share

Environmental Humanities and Summer Times

ecology of residency 09

Muting One's Voice

apocalyptic narrative

julia butterfly hill - my hero

worldchanging

Can Poetry Save the Earth?

Before the memory fades

Indies Choice Book Awards

Get out and give us more money!

HR 875

Eco-Housing and Utah Lands

*Typo Edit*

Salt Lake Sustainable Building Confrence

Obama's Cap and Trade Plan

Everything is Fine, No One is Happy

Small Steps: Political Cartoons

Small Steps: Write an Editorial

Antelope Island and Western Soundscapes

Question about new legislation

Life After Money

Interesting Article.

My paper and a press response

Painting of a Rice Cake

It's quite simple, really.

Fast is good?

participating? yes, no, or both?

Small Steps

Lantern Festival and a riddle game

Fellow-up deer topic

Muir deer in West Village

Recommend a book

You can blog!

Small Steps

Typo Edit