Fireflies live dangerous poem by Ruth Harrisonposted 7/13/08

Fireflies live dangerous showy lives
are easy prey for bats and spiders.
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Got Wildness? by Bonner McAllester posted 7/18/08

Have you ever heard of Christopher Manes? He’s written a book called Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. I recently read an interview with him in which he refers to that famous quote from Henry David Thoreau, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

I used to think that what Thoreau meant by this was wild nature, the wilderness, the pure and “untrammeled” (to quote the 1964 Wilderness Act) landscape you can still find in some places. I figured we do need it for lots of reasons and though I wasn’t sure exactly how it could preserve the rest of the world, I was willing to hope, to intuit.

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Essay: Duffel Bags by Garrett Reppenhagen posted 5/15/08

As I leave my metal box, that I have called home for the last year, I carry two duffel bags. The first is full of the gear and clothing that has offered me survival and protection. The other bag is harder to see with the uncompassionate eye. I have filled the second wih guilt. The shame for the part I have played in this campaign in Iraq. It is more useless than the first. However, it is a burden I must carry. . . .     More...

Essay: How to beat gas prices, improve life and fill the world with happy, healthy dogs by Ronald Siemer posted 5/15/08

Woke up the other morning, wolfed my fat doughnut, turned on the radio to snarl at the obese, immoral, polluted, politically corrupt, economically insane world, pocketed my half-discharged cell phone and my fully charged Gameboy, donned my Grateful Dead baseball cap backward, and stepped out into the world I'd spent another fitful night lamenting as lost for sure.

What greeted my rheumy eyes was something they hadn't embraced since the godawful good days of moiling for magic metal on the lower slopes of the Denali range (which, of course, I've experienced only as an aftereffect of a couple of godawful, gloomy days in the lower bars of Chicago's Near North Side).

Mushing down the street before me at a pace just under the speed limit was a team of Huskies pulling a sled mounted by this big guy--a scene I'd long relegated to images belonging to Jack London novels and gold rush posters I'd seen in childhood libraries and museums.

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Poem: "Catching a Mouse" by Mary Ann Tallonposted 5/29/08

Invited house guests are nice to see,
but not those that come sneaking up on me.
How to get rid of those pests that invade?
I'll tell you wht I did when I saw that they stayed.
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Report: "Butterfly-a-thon", notes from the road #2 by Robert Michael Pyleposted 5/15/08

Robert Michael Pyle, a professional lepidopterist and a founder of the Xerces Society -- Defenders of Inveretebrates -- is on a year long travel project identifying butterfly species in the U.S. Bob is also a good writer, with several books published, and a fine lecturer with sense of humor.

We'll be following his journey from time to time, courtesy of the Xerces Society (see the Links page. Here is a second batch of notes and photos.     More...