Category: Uncategorized
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Calyptura cristata
Aim: I was struck by the descriptive language used to describe both the bird and the lack of knowledge about the species. For example, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this paragraph: The Kinglet Calyptura is among the most enigmatic and poorly understood species of Neotropical birds. A bizarre bird, it resembles a kinglet (Regulus)…
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Pentti Linkola
Pentti Linkola is something of a conscience for Finland and for humanity. His ideas are radical, often shocking and sometimes dangerous. Yet I’ve shared some of his thoughts in moments, as a visceral reaction to the persistent destruction of the biosphere that I have witnessed, and contributed to, throughout my life. While a lot of…
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Braiding Sweetgrass
“Weep! Weep! calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” A friend and colleague recommended Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass a few months ago.…
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Storytelling for the uncanny present
While overseas in November, I caught snippets of news from home: unprecedented bushfire smoke choking major cities; koala populations declared functionally extinct (not all koalas); heritage-listed rainforests burning; farmers traumatised by the screams of dying animals. From afar, these unsettling accounts seem fictional, like the ‘raining frogs’ in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Except in Anderson’s…
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Remembering buntings, forgetting buntings
The Ortolan Bunting and Yellow-breasted Bunting were plentiful during the first decade of my childhood. (I was born in 1975.) The latter was never common in Finland; the country was on the edge of its distribution, but it was an abundant birds throughout its range across northern Eurasia. Well, no more. Yellow-breasted Buntings are no…
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Arts Letters and Numbers residency
How many PhDs does it take to set up a blog? In ‘the plant room’, Timo and I flick jalapeno chip dust off ourselves, smug that we have finally figured out how to insert this blog into the site, on day 3 of a 5-day residency at Arts Letters and Numbers, Averill Park, NY. Although…
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The thing with feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune–without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.I’ve heard it in the chillest land,And on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in extremity,It asked…
PRECARIOUS BIRDS 