3/29/2013
moment of truth
Today a big box came in the mail: 77 rolls of film developed, mostly from my summer with the dog on the Reed Creek in 2011. The film's still too curly to scan, so I'm just cutting it up and filing it away to flatten. I'm nervous to find out whether the photos are worthwhile, but I'm also excited to try and cobble together something out of them. It's been hard to maintain a sense of direction without seeing what I've been shooting. Can't tell much from the negatives... most of the pictures are of
plants, of course. From all the long wading walks we took down the
creek, my dog shows up in only a handful of pictures. Somehow those few
give the rest of the photos a sense of companionship.
3/26/2013
3/24/2013
3/17/2013
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."
Matthew 10:29
I liked thinking about this verse after our class on white nose syndrome. But I can't put that up without wanting to quote the full context (from Luke, here).
"And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Luke 12:22-34
Matthew 10:29
I liked thinking about this verse after our class on white nose syndrome. But I can't put that up without wanting to quote the full context (from Luke, here).
"And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Luke 12:22-34
Jeff Whetstone, Registry
Jeff Whetstone, Johnny
Jeff Whetstone, Reflecting Hole
"I photographed these caves from the vantage point of an artist, explorer, evolutionist, and native son."
Today I went in the Buchanan saltpeter cave, and that reminded me of Jeff Whetstone's Post Pleistocene. "Inside the cave there were names and dates everywhere on the walls--some 100 years old. My older brother’s friends’ names were there. Daryll Walker found his father’s name in there--dated 1965; four years before Daryll was born. We scratched our names on the wall too."
3/08/2013
Finally finished reading 1491: New revelations of the
Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. I wanted it to be more science and less journalism and more North America than South America, so I guess I need to just read more about that now.
South America:
“Speaking broadly, their solution was not to clear the forest but to replace it with one adapted to human use. They set up shop on the bluffs that mark the edge of high water – close enough to the river to fish, far enough to avoid the flood. And then, rather than centering their agriculture on annual crops, they focused on the Amazon’s wildly diverse assortment of trees.
“In his view, the Amazon’s first inhabitants laboriously cleared small plots with their stone axes. But rather than simply planting manioc and other annual crops in their gardens until the forest took them over, they planted selected trees crops along with the manioc and managed the transition. Of the 138 known domesticated plant species in the Amazon, more than half are trees. (Depending on the definition of ‘domesticated,’ the figure could be as high as 80 percent.) Sapodilla, calabash, and tucumá; babaçu, açai, and wild pineapple; coco-palm, American-oil palm, and Panama-hat palm – the Amazon’s wealth of fruits, nuts, and palms is justly celebrated. ‘Visitors are always amazed that you can walk in the forest here and constantly pick fruit from trees,’ Clement said. ‘That’s because people planted them. They’re walking through old orchards.’” (pages 340-341)
North America:
“Between these fields was the forest, which Indians were subjecting to parallel changes. Sometime in the first millennium A.D., the Indians who had burned undergrowth to facilitate grazing began systematically replanting large belts of woodland, transforming them into orchards for fruit and mast (the general name for hickory nuts, beechnuts, acorns, butternuts, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, and chestnuts). Chestnut was especially popular – not the imported European chestnut roasted on Manhattan street corners in the fall, but the smaller, soft-shelled, deeply sweet native American chestnut, now almost extinguished by chestnut blight. In colonial times, as many as one out of every four trees in between southwestern Canada and Georgia was a chestnut – partly the result, it would seem, of Indian burning and planting.” (pages 297-298)
South America:
“Speaking broadly, their solution was not to clear the forest but to replace it with one adapted to human use. They set up shop on the bluffs that mark the edge of high water – close enough to the river to fish, far enough to avoid the flood. And then, rather than centering their agriculture on annual crops, they focused on the Amazon’s wildly diverse assortment of trees.
“In his view, the Amazon’s first inhabitants laboriously cleared small plots with their stone axes. But rather than simply planting manioc and other annual crops in their gardens until the forest took them over, they planted selected trees crops along with the manioc and managed the transition. Of the 138 known domesticated plant species in the Amazon, more than half are trees. (Depending on the definition of ‘domesticated,’ the figure could be as high as 80 percent.) Sapodilla, calabash, and tucumá; babaçu, açai, and wild pineapple; coco-palm, American-oil palm, and Panama-hat palm – the Amazon’s wealth of fruits, nuts, and palms is justly celebrated. ‘Visitors are always amazed that you can walk in the forest here and constantly pick fruit from trees,’ Clement said. ‘That’s because people planted them. They’re walking through old orchards.’” (pages 340-341)
North America:
“Between these fields was the forest, which Indians were subjecting to parallel changes. Sometime in the first millennium A.D., the Indians who had burned undergrowth to facilitate grazing began systematically replanting large belts of woodland, transforming them into orchards for fruit and mast (the general name for hickory nuts, beechnuts, acorns, butternuts, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, and chestnuts). Chestnut was especially popular – not the imported European chestnut roasted on Manhattan street corners in the fall, but the smaller, soft-shelled, deeply sweet native American chestnut, now almost extinguished by chestnut blight. In colonial times, as many as one out of every four trees in between southwestern Canada and Georgia was a chestnut – partly the result, it would seem, of Indian burning and planting.” (pages 297-298)
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