I have to say, I have a new found appetite for bugs after watching the chimps in this video artfully 'fish' for termites. Yet the best part about the video is how the researchers turned into instant wrecks when they tried it. Of course, being National Geographic, the announcer has to make the obvious connection between fishing for termites and chimps forging weapons (which they would no doubt use to hunt Wooly Mammoths).
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Friday, March 21, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Small White Lady's Slipper
This is the draft video I put together of the Small White Lady's Slipper on Bkejwanong Territory. I believe the community holds the largest population in Canada, and is one of two or three sites in Ontario. You'll notice how severe shoreline erosion is to the plant. The most ironic part about the situation is how the invasive phragmites plant is actually holding parts of the shore (and the plants) in place. Phragmites is taking over like wildfire, and indeed is the source of massive wildfires in the spring. The plant has long tendril roots, which you'll see, and does not allow much else (waterfowl, indigenous reeds, prairie flowers, etc...) to grow.
Music is "Salka" by Sigur-Ros.
Music is "Salka" by Sigur-Ros.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
a post!
I watched the video produced by Amanda Baggs about a week ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Specifically, it reminded me of a couple things. Firstly, I recalled a line from Gaston Bachelard's book Water and Dreams in which he makes the argument that people who live near water all their life, know the water as a poetic reality, rather than as a determined, and I might say, a strict linear quality. Secondly, I was reminded of when I shared some of my research with a friend (perhaps a bit too enthusiastically), only to find he just didn't get what I was trying to say. The frustration arose when I tried to suggest that an animated experience of reality can allow for the presence of what some Anthropologists (Hallowell, Ingold) consider the other-than-human beings that fill old stories and mythology. This potential, or possibility, arises through a communication with the world that defies the strict edicts of what the modern world considers communication. The communication does not have to be expressed in English, on television, or on the internet, but I like to think it comes from the experience of being here and listening and the repetition of this. It may be in thunderclouds that are other-than mere meteorological phenomena or it may be in snowfall that is other-than frozen crystalized precipitation. I like to think of these things as Bachelard, as the poetic realities, that if we're fortunate enough may find words not easily distilled in English, the poetic realities that move us to engage with the world in anti-modern dialogue.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Chipmunk
A chipmunk that often comes through backyard looking for food, thought I'd give him some bird seed... he has plenty of scars from previous scraps with other chipmunks and maybe the number of cats that harrass him.
Storm in Chatham
My friend April filmed this storm in her backyard, reminds me of the torrential rainstorms I remember, waves of water coming in horizontally. It's kind of scary how we'll get week after week of bone dry baking heat, and then snap!
Monday, April 16, 2007
Big wings
I've been somewhat hesitant to post anything other than the occasional set of photos on my blog over the past month, without it appearing to be further wallowing in the hopeless and subtle anxiety I've felt since returning from New Orleans. The tailspin continues, but I wanted to stress through my past couple posts (and others I may have made but erased) that hope comes through in little signs, and further, that the feeling of hopelessness can be contextualized from other people who feel the same way I do about social and environmental injustice. Sometimes the people who share these things with you do so without you realizing. Only afterwards, after reflection and meditation do the measures of hope add up. For instance, Jim Igoe, the anthropologist I stayed with Baton Rouge, concluded an article with an interesting thought that I had first dismissed as stretching to find a silver lining. In his article, (Anthropology News, December 2006), we see the transformation of the landscapes and people of New Orleans from communities of human beings (and to that extend I would add 'communities of non-human beings') from people with agency to the classical romantic dichotomy of dark (abject) entities while the viewer implicitly occupies attributes of transcendence (the sublime) by maintaining the safety of escape from the despair that is at hand. Now, what I had dismissed before comes back as a means of fully appreciating hope and hopelessness, as Igoe states,
These transformations have obvious and significant implications for the ways in which we conceptualize human rights and social justice. Social scientists have an important role in this reconceptualization. A large part of this role is to better understand the nature of the order that I have briefly described here, as part of its nature is to conceal its nature. An equally crucial element of this role will hinge upon our effectiveness at communicating our insights and recommendations to the broader public and decision-makers.
The nature of this order he speaks of should raise concern in everyone, as it is has become in a sense a new nature, as elusive as that nature that led John Muir to the heights of an ancient redwood in the middle of a thunderstorm where he could come face to face with God in the raw. The storm he came face to face with likely concealed its nature to him, giving him an elusive flirt that could only reveal itself at his death, for the real nature of his being had been abandoned with his wife and children who waited patiently for him at home. They were shut out for that which expressed its pure sublimity. As William Cronon suggests in his paper The Trouble with Wilderness, could that same connection with something bigger not be found in our backyards? Must we fly and view these things from the safety of glass?
Indeed these things need to be reconceputalized.
I think of a story told about the creation of a particular river I grew up near, and the all-encompassing immensity of water it holds enroute to the ocean. That river, which I knew as a kid as the place to get the best perch as they too were carried down from Lake Huron, enroute to my stomach, is also a troubled river, as it also carries the weight of heavy metals and a very unbio-diverse array of chemicals from the appropriately named Chemical Valley in Sarnia. This story, though it may not be appropriately be shared here, would have likely resonated with German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who died under suspicious circumstances whilst being pursued by Nazis. In his wonderful essay Philosophy of History, Benjamin meditates on a work of art by Paul Klees, Angelus Novus:
Benjamin writes of the ordering of history through this Being with its wings, and states:
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
This storm we call progress has been piling things high on rivers in a relatively short span of history that is meant to be transcendental. Perhaps the basis of hope is found in the reordering of a type of thought that dictates historical progression is the only way to move forward. Perhaps becoming trapped in thisprogression of thought allows us to be either co-opted into it or lost to all in despair. I like to think there is hope, a way of thinking that asks us to reconsider the nature of imperialism and mass-consumption, and that indeed those things of beauty are also in our backyard... like the chickadees that nest in our backyard. They too can order our thoughts in ways that don't turn entire worlds upside-down and shake them up end over end as the storm of progress... simplicity.
These transformations have obvious and significant implications for the ways in which we conceptualize human rights and social justice. Social scientists have an important role in this reconceptualization. A large part of this role is to better understand the nature of the order that I have briefly described here, as part of its nature is to conceal its nature. An equally crucial element of this role will hinge upon our effectiveness at communicating our insights and recommendations to the broader public and decision-makers.
The nature of this order he speaks of should raise concern in everyone, as it is has become in a sense a new nature, as elusive as that nature that led John Muir to the heights of an ancient redwood in the middle of a thunderstorm where he could come face to face with God in the raw. The storm he came face to face with likely concealed its nature to him, giving him an elusive flirt that could only reveal itself at his death, for the real nature of his being had been abandoned with his wife and children who waited patiently for him at home. They were shut out for that which expressed its pure sublimity. As William Cronon suggests in his paper The Trouble with Wilderness, could that same connection with something bigger not be found in our backyards? Must we fly and view these things from the safety of glass?
Indeed these things need to be reconceputalized.
I think of a story told about the creation of a particular river I grew up near, and the all-encompassing immensity of water it holds enroute to the ocean. That river, which I knew as a kid as the place to get the best perch as they too were carried down from Lake Huron, enroute to my stomach, is also a troubled river, as it also carries the weight of heavy metals and a very unbio-diverse array of chemicals from the appropriately named Chemical Valley in Sarnia. This story, though it may not be appropriately be shared here, would have likely resonated with German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who died under suspicious circumstances whilst being pursued by Nazis. In his wonderful essay Philosophy of History, Benjamin meditates on a work of art by Paul Klees, Angelus Novus:
Benjamin writes of the ordering of history through this Being with its wings, and states:
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
This storm we call progress has been piling things high on rivers in a relatively short span of history that is meant to be transcendental. Perhaps the basis of hope is found in the reordering of a type of thought that dictates historical progression is the only way to move forward. Perhaps becoming trapped in thisprogression of thought allows us to be either co-opted into it or lost to all in despair. I like to think there is hope, a way of thinking that asks us to reconsider the nature of imperialism and mass-consumption, and that indeed those things of beauty are also in our backyard... like the chickadees that nest in our backyard. They too can order our thoughts in ways that don't turn entire worlds upside-down and shake them up end over end as the storm of progress... simplicity.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Jackson's Park, day the before Spring thaw
Mzin and I went for a walk in Jackson Park yesterday, for the first time in a couple months the temperatures were hovering a few degrees above freezing, so there was a noticeable change in the air as if everything was just on the verge of changing. For the past while the cedars have been creaking and popping as it gets well below freezing, but yesterday they were in a very silent anticipation. The bird,s however were another matter because they were all over the place, digging under the bark for the insects that were likely also emerging. It was quite cloudy and in some parts foggy, but I think the pictures turned out all right, we were checking out our new camera, a Canon something or other, A710is.
images by Rick Fehr, 2007 ©, Petrborough, Jackson's Park.
images by Rick Fehr, 2007 ©, Petrborough, Jackson's Park.
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