Baby, It's Cold Outside

‘’The Winter Evening’’

American Winter Scene  Currier & Ives 

O winter, ruler of the inverted year...

I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,

And dreaded as thou art!...I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,

And all the comforts that the lowly roof 

of  undisturb’d retirement, and the hours 

Of long uninterrupted evening, knows.                                                    William Cowper 1785  

The Little Ice Age

Lasting from the early 14th century until the mid-19th century, the ‘Little Ice Age’ was disastrous on a global scale.  From the 1620’s until the 1690’s, longer winters and cooler summers disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests across Europe; the coast of Iceland was so blocked by ice that no ships could dock. Most of the rivers in Europe froze over and ice on the Baltic Sea was thick enough to walk from one side to the other.

Good Vibrations:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmWvR-kdnCo

Going, Going, Gone

The Sixth Extinction 

Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

Our envelope, as I have called it, the cultural insulation that separates us from nature, is rather like the window of a lit-up railway carriage at night. Most of the time it is a mirror of our own concerns, including our concern about nature.

                                     

                        

Auroch (Bos taurus primigenius)

As a mirror, it fills us with the sense that the world is something which exists primarily in reference to us: it was created for us; we are the centre of it and the whole point of its existence. 

Wooly rhino (Coelodonta Antiquitatis)

 But occasionally the mirror turns into a real window through which we can see only the vision of an indifferent nature that goes along for untold aeons of time without us, seems to have produced us only by accident, and, if it were conscious, could only regret having done so
Northrop Frye, Creation & Recreation  

                                                          
                                                                                                            

 Good Reads: The Sixth Extinction  by Richard Leakey

Good Vibrations:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtM09ki5nY

Me & My Arrow

Man & Other Animals     Animal Assisted Therapy

Animal companionship brings with it a myriad of health benefits, both mental and physical.  Pet ownership or regular contact with animals can lower blood pressure and alleviate stress, and animal mediated therapy is well established in many countries for the treatment of autism, psychiatric conditions, and chronic depression.

Children with terminal illnesses also benefit from contact with animals.  In the US and Italy, it is common practice to bring both together to improve the quality of life of humans, certainly, and of the animals as well. Research suggests that the elderly who suffer from dementia derive tangible positive effects from contact with domestic animals, as do those older people who merely require a bit of four legged company.

Good Reads: Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv

Good Vibrations :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1n9QTkrkP0

I Talk to the Trees

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.

One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery,  and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue. To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside.

 If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator.

                                                            From The Good Oak 

                                                           A Sand County Almanac, 

                                                           Aldo Leopold, 1949

Good Vibratioins: http://bit.ly/1Vh7v3F

With a Little Help from My Friends

     Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark

                                       1613,  Oil on Panel

'Nature teaches beasts
         to know their friends'
       
               Shakespeare,Coriolanus

Biophilia, meaning “love of life or living systems” (Fromm 1964), refers to the natural attraction of humans to all living things. Harvard biologist (specifically, myrmecologist), E.O. Wilson popularized the term in his work, Biophilia, although the term’s meaning changed to “an innate love for nature,” a definition which suggests biophilia is genetically based.

In a subsequent book, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Kellert &Wilson 1993), several contributors examine the validity of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, with Wilson (1993) proposing that biophilia evolved by natural selection in a cultural context,  called  gene-culture co-evolution. Given the history of human/animal relationships, and the substantial body of evidence of a growing need for contact with nature, Wilson’s theory is not as farfetched as some would lead us to believe.

Good Vibrations: http://bit.ly/1NiWMhr

Can't Take my Ayes Off You

Aye-Aye   (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

               From She Walks in Beauty  1814

                    -George Gordon, Lord  Byron

The aye-aye is the world’s largest nocturnal primate. The extraordinary combination of physical features is the result of a unique evolutionary process. They have large dish-like ears that rotate independently, incisors which grow continuously like rodents, and long fingers, especially the middle one, which is used to tap on hollow logs to fish out grubs and other insects. 
 

Endemic (native to and found nowhere else) to Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, it is the most evolutionarily distinct of all the lemurs, being the only living representative of the primate family, Daubentoniidae.  Remains have been found of another, now extinct, member of that family, estimated to be five times heavier than the aye-aye.  Scientific evidence suggests that its closest relative is the indri (Indri indri), another fascinating lemur.

Good Vibrations: http://bit.ly/1N2O108

Swingin' on a Star?

…I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

                               Robert Frost, 1916

Nature Deficit Disorder

In his landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv defines a condition from which many children and adults today suffer-nature deficit disorder. Urbanization and the rise of technology, particularly our dependence on the latter are producing generations of ‘screen addicted’ individuals. Gone are the days where children ran outside to play after school. Instead, their attachment to computer and mobile phone screens has lured them to routines and habits which can potentially prompt antisocial behaviors and impede cognitive growth.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence includes outdoor learning as an essential element to a child’s education and there is a movement in the UK and elsewhere which seeks to put people, big and small, back in touch with nature. On a more positive note, research shows that growing urbanization also tends to create a need to be reconnected with wildlife & nature. 

Good Vibrations:  http://bit.ly/1UTu2nm

I Want a New Drug

One quarter of our medications come from natural sources. Additionally, about 70% of the most widely used drugs today are models of natural chemical compounds, mostly from plants, but others have even been derived fungi and bacteria. Scientists are currently optimistic about a protein contained in vampire bat saliva which is currently being tested anticoagulant and a possible cure for thrombosis.

The search for potential cures (pharmaceutical or bioprospecting) from natural origins is a strong argument for forest preservation as so much has yet to be discovered. It is estimated that less than 0.1% of known plant species has been examined for potential medicinal use.

Salix alba, White Willow, origin of aspirin

Lost in the forest...

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart. 

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. 

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind
 

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind 

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--- 

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.  

                                                                          Pablo Neruda

                                                                          

                                                                          



Good Vibrations:     http://bit.ly/1RN5IRC