watching whales watching us

Yesterday evening and this morning I read this wonderful article in the NY Times magazine, “Watching Whales Watching Us“, about the return of almost-extinct gray whales to lagoons of Baja. They are called “Friendlies” by the locals and the biologists who study them, because they appear to be trying to gently communicate with the same [...]

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creative aspect, special circumstances

This month I am reading about linguistics, to remind myself about the foundational legos of human communication. One book is by (of course) Wendell Berry, called “Standing by Words,” in which Berry argues that the degeneration in the clarity and meaning of words is symptomatic of the disconnection of individuals from their communities and the [...]

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horse people help horse people

In times like these, what folks need is a heartening tale. I myself have been looking for creativity in odd places, when I find that I’m at the end of my rope and don’t know what else to do to find a job or to rally my spirits. On BBC radio this week, I heard [...]

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authenticity over artifice

Wallace Stegner is one of the most natural voices of western literature (in my opinion). He influenced the United States to set aside vast tracks of land for preservation and protection. You can read his famous Wilderness Letter here. A few excerpts (for those who won’t read the whole thing–lazy!): “Something will have gone out [...]

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boared to death

Today I tried to find information about what you can do if you happen across a wild boar, otherwise known as wild pig, feral pig, Wildschwein, or sus scrofa. There are wild pigs here in Berlin, I’ve been told (and as this video shows), and I know it’s just a matter of time before I [...]

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collectives

At the DDR Museum today (the German (or Deutchses) Democratic Republic = GDR in English), I discovered among other things that children in Kindergartens had to have collective potty breaks, which meant that they sat in a row all together on potty seats and couldn’t stand up until everyone was finished. I’m still not sure [...]

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the true of music

I don’t want to seem like a conservative purist, a strict prescriptionist, a myopic naysayer, or a jerk, but when it comes to music—and let’s face it, lots of things—I have a hard time swallowing inauthentic combinations, such as a philharmonic orchestra playing pop tunes, or an opera singer imitating Billie Holiday, or a Norwegian [...]

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strange animal encounters

In planning our backpacking trip along the east coast of Australia, I kept reading in some places that you could expect to wake up to a troop of kangaroos surrounding your tent. I told my sister about that, and she related a story about her one-time camping trip to New Orleans, when she woke up [...]

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paddle rights

During a slow breast-stroke behind ten other people in a row at the Stadtbad Mitte swimming pool this evening, I thought about social order, the need for community structures to keep us all from swimming amoc. Today is Human Rights Day. If you’ve never read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you can WATCH it [...]

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