The Ghost Map

It may seem strange to include Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map as one of my titles in this blog, but it has made me seriously think about how we live upon our planet. Johnson retells the story of how Dr. John Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead teamed up to unraveled the mystery of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London. The struggles that science had to prove itself in that day and age when the intelligentsia and even the scientists couldn't expand their thinking to encompass the possibility of disease causing agents which were invisible to the naked eye are well documented. Today because of our technology we are aware of bacteria, with the electron microscope we see into the structure of viruses, and with ever improvements we are now visualizing atoms. Changing the way people see their world was the biggest challenge that Snow and Whitehead had to face.

Having grown up in the suburbs I can only imagine life in one. After marrying my husband, we settled into a community thirty miles or so outside of Boston in what some would call "the woods." We love it, and I can imagine living anywhere else especially not the city. I went to college in Worcester and as New England's second largest city, I didn't feel it to be all that big, not like Boston. With my son heading off to college, and most likely one in Boston, I will have to change my country mouse ways.

Johnson's book, especially the last chapter made me rethink cities. Over the past two weeks, my ecology class has been studying human population and its growth. We've discussed the pressures that an ever growing population has on its immediate environment and the planet as a whole. Johnson makes an excellent argument for urban living. The footprint of the high numbers of urban dwellers is in fact smaller than us suburbanites. With more and more of us moving to urban areas will this in fact be a way to be better to our planet? I hadn't thought so, but it comes with the caveat that we will have to provide an infrastructure to protect the public health such as London did all those years ago by finally building a sewer system that removed animal and human waste and protected the purity of the public drinking water supply.

In the end this book has changed my life as it has caused me to rethink how I live and how I teach. I'm not just ready to sell my house and move to the city, but I will respect that cities have an important role to play in helping to "green" our planet.

The Sound of Butterflies

Cecropia moth

Thankfully November is over and with it my second successful year with NaNoWriMo. I spent much of my free time writing my 50,000 words which somehow assembled itself into a novel. A very rough one at that by as Anne Lamott writes in her book on writing and life, Bird by bird, you've got to write a sh@#%y first draft before you can get to the polished one. Where this nascent novel will go is anybody's guess at this point.

All writers know that in order to write better you must be an avid reader. Even though I might have spent hours jotting notes down on paper or sitting in front of the computer typing, I could not quite give up reading. As long as there is breath in me I will be reading. To that end I read Rachel King's The Sound of Butterflies during the month. I enjoyed the book for its description of a naturalist's life pursuing his passion, in this case in the form of lepidoptery, in the Amazon at the turn of the 20th Century. In the jungle this amateur naturalist learns about science, the brutality of nature within the jungle, and the dangerous behavior of man.

The photo above depicts a Cecropia moth which had been found one early morning last June outside the school building in which I work. One of my colleagues brought it into the classroom and our students were fascinated by it. As the day progressed, the moth must have warmed and once we took it out of the container in which we had it in, it slowly began to beat its wings and eventually took flight. It was drawn to the window which we opened in order to let it back outdoors. For a short time we were able to enjoy its beauty. Now on a cold December day, looking at this photo I am reminded of that warm spring day and look forward to the Winter Solstice knowing that the days will eventually begin to have longer periods of sunlight and eventually there will be a return of warm temperatures.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween - ceramic pumpkins and my cross-stitch
ornaments.

One of my favorite things to do is to read holiday themed stories around Christmas-time, but I don't usually think to read Halloween stories at this time of the year. However, I couldn't resist re-reading one of my all time favorites, Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party featuring Hercule Piorot and Ariadne Oliver.  A murder is committed at a children's party where the victim, one of the girls at the party, is drowned in the bobbing for apples bucket. I never was a fan of bobbing for apples and now I have a really good excuse not to like it.

Isn't romantic?

My wedding cake topper (Llardo),
my grandparents wedding photo,
and Galt Niederhoffer's novel
 

 The Romantics by Galt Niederhoffer, takes the reader off to the Maine coast for the August wedding of Lila and Tom. The happy couple were college sweethearts. Well they became sweethearts only after Tom stopped dating Laura, Lila's roommate. Laura is to be maid-of-honor at the wedding having stayed friends with Lila and Tom. We are then introduced to the rest of their gang of friends who have convened for the wedding. This clique of friends formed when they were all at Yale. Fellow students called the clique The Romantics as a result of their intermingling relationships.



My grandmother as a
flower girl.

To be honest, I really didn't care much for this bunch of people and Niederhoffer makes them out to be very pretentious and superficial. They certainly don't take friendship or marriage very seriously. Overall those of them that made it to the altar are very unhappy and even Tom and Lila don't seem to be well suited for each other. Marriage is depicted as a social status and a rite of passage more than the sacrament that it is meant to be. No one seems to be working hard at their relationships. And those of us who are married know that it is no picnic and requires lots of patience, endurance, compromise, desire, and love.
The story line takes place over a 24-hour time period including the arrival of the wedding party, the rehearsal dinner, the morning of the wedding, and the big moment. I won't spoil the ending. Let's just say I was a little bit surprised by it, and it lived up to the title.

The depiction of the rehearsal dinner got me to remembering my own. I will admit I was nervous, a bride wants everything to go well. When we arrived, the church was cold (married in early November in New England) and my dad was obviously worried about getting the place nice and warm in the morning in plenty of time before the guests arrived. Speaking of arrival, my in-laws were late and I was getting a little panicked and peeved. Once everyone showed up the rehearsal itself went fine. Off to dinner we went.

Now by the time we arrived at the restaurant my stomach was a little queasy. I chalked it up to being hungry as we were running behind and it had been some time since lunch. A little dinner roll and some salad should help I thought. Next thing I know I need to head to the ladies room. It was awful, before I knew it I'm vomiting and feeling miserable and every female guest knows it. I'm embarrassed because they must think it's my nerves and I know it isn't. There is something seriously wrong with me. I don't remember much more of the dinner except that I said good night to my future husband and drove home. Shortly after midnight I stopped vomiting and I knew it was over.

I managed to get a couple hours of sleep. I showered, ate a piece of toast and went to have my hair done. I came home, had another piece of toast, did my makeup and was dressed in time for the photographer's arrival. The wedding went off without a hitch. The reception was fantastic. Stopped in at home for the after party, and made our farewells to the family and took a limo to the airport hotel to spend the night before an early flight to our honeymoon cruise. Now here's the funny part, in the middle of the night I wake up all alone in bed, my new spouse is puking up his guts in the bathroom. "Okay it wasn't your nerves," he says. Of course it wasn't.  It was a fast moving stomach bug and I made sure everyone knew that fact when we got back home. I can happily say that 23 years later it's still a fun story to tell.

Nature Wars IV - last post on this topic

I promise, this is the last post on this topic. It's amazing what a reader can get from one book. Chapter Ten of Jim Sterba's Nature Wars is all about Roadkill. He begins by introducing the reader to Brewster Bartlett whose nickname is Dr. Splat because as a high school teacher looking for a way to use the fledgling Internet and e-mail system to help communicate the findings of a research project, he decided to have his students keep track of the roadkill on the roads around town. Ghoulish you might think but as a high school teacher myself I can appreciate that students especially some of the young guys would think this was a cool project.

I myself heard Bartlett speak at the New Hampshire Environmental Educators spring conference a couple of years ago. As an educator I am amazed to discover how little my students know about the world around them. Very often they are surprised when I tell them about plant life and the food that they eat. "EWWWW, fruit is the ripened ovary of the flower?" "I'm allergic to plant sperm (aka pollen)?"  I get a sense of gratification when they look through the microscope and see the beauty of cells that make up a leaf. Author, Richard Louv, in his book The Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, makes an argument for reconnecting our children with the natural world. They spend way too much time indoors. The shame of it is, children don't get to play and explore outdoors often. After school care, living in areas that may not be deemed safe, over scheduled lives, and time spent in front of the TV or computer screen keep kids from experiencing nature.

Much of Sterba's book focused on how disconnected we all have become from Nature. We want to protect it and yet we still carry out behaviors that places the environment at risk mostly through our overwhelming consumption of resources. In the Epilogue, he points out that here in America we have an abundance of natural resources many of which we take for granted. From our abundance we wear blinders that prevent us from realizing how much we spend on repairs to damaged cars (deer and other animal strikes), replacing landscaping or crop damage, the cost of cleaning up playing fields and golf courses (geese feces), and the damage from flooding caused by beaver dams. If we were to find ourselves unable to pay for these repairs we certainly would have to change our world view. In fact I try to remind my students that when we talk about environmentalism we must realize we speak from our own cultural experiences and that for other people around the world their concept of nature is much different from our own. We've saved our own forests here in the US but if we purchase products that result in the damage or deforestation of someone else's land then shame on us. It may be time for us all to take a good look at our role in the ecosystem because we are not separate from it, we are part of the biotic factors that make it up and our possessions and lifestyles create many of the harmful abiotic factors that we all have to live with.

Nature Wars III - I'm Guilty Too!

My empty bird feeder

I am really captivated by Jim Sterba's Nature Wars, as you can tell since this is the third post I've generated based on this one book. I never thought that feeding the birds wasn't really the best thing to so, even after we were visited by a bear (one of the other animals discussed in the book) you would have thought I might have changed my behavior.

Many of us love to hang up a feeder and watch the various species that come to feed at or under the feeder. I've had chickadees, nuthatches, finches, titmice, cardinals, woodpeckers, mourning doves, and the list goes on. I've also had both red and gray squirrels. Sterba's right when he writes that these creatures can find plenty to eat on their own. In fact the many perennials that are planted in my garden provide plenty of seeds for the birds, and the fact that I leave the seed heads on long after the blooms have faded helps them to find a delicious meal.

Now granted the seed does attract other animals, as well as, the birds. I mentioned squirrels, which are really something when it comes to getting at the birdseed. I've had squirrels eat through the plastic tubes of feeders to get a meal. This summer one of them got into the garage where we stored the seed in a plastic covered container. The squirrel chewed through the cover to get at the seed. We placed the container in a garbage can with a cover on top and the darn thing chewed through that as well!

At one time I used to purchase those feed filled suet squares which were very popular with the birds in the winter. Well, they are popular with bears in the early spring. I never saw the bear but I found the damage that he or she left behind. The shepherd's crook from which the suet feeder hung was bent over (and couldn't be straightened) and the feeder itself gone. My neighbors informed me that they saw the bear in action. That put an immediate halt to feeding the birds. I read up about bear behavior and learned that they will remember where they have found food in the past and will revisit those sites. I also read about hibernation times and figured I'd put out food only during those times.

Sterba points out that feeders become a feeding site for predators of small birds. I've noticed a few cats over the years come stalking through my yard but never really thought that they might be after easy pickings from the feeder. I just hoped they'd take care of my chipmunk population. But it's the hawks who have really benefited from the smorgasbord that I''ve created. I've witnessed the hawk come swooping in for the kill. Sometimes the big bird is successful and other times I've seen a small bird take cover in a bush where the hawk could not fit.

I guess what finally got me was Sterba's statistics - 50 million Americans spending close to $3.5 billion (yes that's right billion) on bird food. On food that these birds don't need because they can fend perfectly well for themselves. Here I am donating food items and money to the local food pantry and feeding the birds. I've decided that's got to stop. I'll let nature take care of her own, and I'll use the money that I save to help support those of my own species who are struggling to feed themselves.

Nature Wars II - Oh Deer!

Deer damage - a defoliated
hosta plant in my yard

Jim Sterba in his book Nature Wars challenges the reader to think about how one relates to nature now that nature has returned. The eastern deciduous forest has rebounded and with it many species which were once threatened, the white tail deer among them. Those darn pesky deer are now so numerous that they cause huge costs to the insurance industry due to car strikes. They do quite a bit of damage to landscaped yards (mine included) and crops. But without man taking part of the ecosystem as the top predator we no longer work to keep the population in check.

My father grew up during World War II when people planted Victory Gardens for their sustenance. My grandparents bought a piece of land which at one time seemed to be in the middle of no where but today is smack dab in the middle of sprawl as Sterba calls it. But back then going to the market wasn't as easy as it is today. My grandmother preserved the vegetables that they raised along with meat from the chickens they kept, while the eggs were sold. It would be years before they'd give up that hard work as groceries became easier to obtain.

Dad learned to hunt and fish as a kid going out with his father, grandfather, or uncles to bag deer, duck, frogs, and trout. He continued his hunting and fishing into his adulthood. He taught my sister and I how to fish taking us out when he could. He even got himself a lobstering license and some pots. I remember bobbing about in a small boat near the breakwater while my father stood up in the boat and hauled his pots up from the ocean floor. It was just business as usual.

I saw Bambi as a kid and was traumatized by his mother's loss but I saw it for what it was. Hunting is one thing and the murder of a parent is another, and I think many people get the two confused. Man has always been a part of keeping other animal populations in check. Not until the mid-20th century did we take on large animal farming and decided that we would eat only chicken, beef, and pork. No wonder there are plenty of geese, turkeys, and deer available fore us to eat today and which we don't. We think of them as nuisances, our grandparents would have seen dinner. For me it was natural that people hunted, my father hunted, we had a deer head on the family room wall. Sterba's book challenges us to realize that more and more we are separated from nature and we really need to reflect on how that changes the way nature is viewed and managed. And yes we do need to take a role in managing the ecosystem for our benefit and for the health of the other organisms in it.