FollowHere are my recent musings on patterns and connections In Nature.
This series of blog postings contains the most recent Internet articles that interest me. They are sources for my musings and my research which I am happy to share with you. If you find any of the articles interesting, I hope that you will offer your comments at the end of the list.
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Those of you who are my regular readers know that I see Nature communicating with us through Her three voices: the aesthetic, the spiritual, and the scientific. . These three voices are beautifully joined in this wonderful poem by Alison Hawthorne Deming . Please take some time to meditate on her words and her metaphors as she portrays deep connections in Nature.
The Web by Alison Hawthorne Deming with lines from Claude Levi-Strauss
Is it possible there is a certain
kind of beauty as large as the trees
that survive the five-hundred-year fire
the fifty-year flood, trees we can’t
comprehend even standing
beside them with outstretched arms
to gauge their span,
a certain kind of beauty
so strong, so deeply concealed
in relationship — black truffle
to red-backed vole to spotted owl
to Douglas fir, bats and gnats,
beetles and moss, flying squirrel
and the high-rise of a snag,
each needing and feeding the other—
a conversation so quiet
the human world can vanish into it.
A beauty moves in such a place
like snowmelt sieving through
the fungal mats that underlie and
interlace the giant firs, tunneling
under streams where cutthroat fry
live a meter deep in gravel,
fluming downstream over rocks
that have a hold on place
lasting longer than most nations,
sluicing under deadfall spanners
that rise and float to let floodwaters pass,
a beauty that fills the space of the forest
with music that can erupt as
varied thrush or warbler, calypso
orchid or stream violet, forest
a conversation not an argument,
a beauty gathering such clarity and force
it breaks the mind’s fearful hold on its
little moment steeping it in a more dense
intelligibility, within which centuries
and distances answer each other
and speak at last with one and the same voice.
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Children need nature; nature needs children
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What does it mean to preserve nature in the Age of Humans?
“Regardless of how the Anthropocene debate plays out, environmental science and policy experts remind everyone how hard it is to implement whatever we want without unexpected consequences. The unpredictability of ecosystems can result in cases in which the preservationist agenda becomes complicated as ecosystems change in surprising ways.”
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David Suzuki: How to Save the Monarch Butterfly
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Fish go with the flow. This paper describes why fish are able to use schooling. Each individual in the school uses its sensory organs to define its physical position by sensing the location, speed, and direction of its nearest neighbors.
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The next step in saving the planet: E O Wilson and Sean Carroll in conversation
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My name is Bill Graham. As a Marine Biologist who has worked in the US and Mexico for 30 years, I am a student of Nature, a teacher, a researcher, and a nature photographer. Through my work, I have acquired an ever growing passion for how everything in Nature is connected. Today, I travel extensively contemplating about, writing about, and photographing Nature’s connections. I also work with conservation projects in the USA and Mexico and mentor talented youth.