Walking the Berkshires

Interview with a Blogger

I am flattered to be profiled with an interview today at a blog and environmental forum called My Greenpeace Buddies.  I was approached to share my thoughts as a blogger who writes about ecological matters, among other things, and was happy to oblige. 

Given my strong preference to focus on areas of common interest rather than positions - except in those cases where reason is clearly out of the question, such as where a certain southern African dictator is concerned - the interview goes strongly down the path of being "occasionally nettlesome" but "fairly non-partisan".  I talked about how individuals and institutions change their behavior and some of what is and is not helpful in that regard. 

I suspect this may be the only time that my right-of-center cousin Tigerhawk gets an acknowledgment in this or indeed any environmental forum.  Anything for bilateral relations, dear readers. And yes, I do know the difference between "affect" and "effect"...just not when I wrote out my responses.  Plus, I found an opportunity to quote from The Last of the Mohicans and it wasn't anything about noble savages.  Fellow English Majors can rest easy that my undergraduate degree is in no immediate danger of revocation.  Mugabe's, however, is another question.

Drop in if you like and check it out.

Lhude Sing "Beep Beep!"

"Sumer is icumen in" at 23:59 this evening, to be precise. Still, I rather doubt that any of the 8 North American members of the Cuckoo family will be heard singing outside my window on the Solstice, lhude or otherwise.  However, if I were in the desert southwest - and a bit gullible - I might hope to hear one of them go "Beep Beep!"  Yes, the family Cuculidae includes cuckoos, roadrunners and anis. 

We have plenty of "Wile E" Coyotes hereabouts, though. Lhude howl awoo?

Cabinet of Curiosities #8 "Mathom Edition"

"It was a tendency of hobbit-holes to get cluttered up; for which the custom of giving so many birthday-presents was largely responsible. Not, of course, that the birthday-presents were always new; there were one or two old mathoms of forgotten uses that had circulated all around the district; but Bilbo had usually given new presents and kept those that he received." 

- The Fellowship of the Ring pg 65; Art at left: "A Tolkien Mathomium" by James Dunning.

Apparently J.R.R. Tolkien is to blame for those regifted presents among coworkers come Secret Santa Season.  A mathom to a hobbit is something for which one really has no use, or for which the use has been forgotton, but is passed along (if parted with at all) rather than tossed out.  A mathom-house like the one the hobbits maintain at Michel Delving is really just a cabinet of curiosities by another name. It is a fine line between a meaningful heirloom and a mathom, and the difference between the two is the story that goes with the item.  Here, then, is the 8th "Mathom Edition" of Cabinet of Curiosities, the blog carnival that dares you gift us with the stories behind your own mathoms.

Mr. Lord of Lord and Lady starts us off with the remarkable story of how he unravelled the genealogy of a family heirloom: a flintlock. 

"It is a beautiful piece in very bad condition, a Connecticut weapon made probably in the late 1700's It was given a special place in my collection. On the top of barrel there is a German silver inlay and this is inscribed with J.LORD, this is why the dealer in Tribes Hill new I would want it."

Over in the forums at Straight Razor Place, the smooth skinned devotees of wet shaving are geeking over their ancestral shaving gear.  Though one commenter notes "Hehe, I can't help thinking that most of my family would consider such an item no different than an old toothbrush rather than an heirloom."  Good thing other folks do.  I have a couple of my grandfather's, but they are definitely just for looking at.

Zay MoMo has what may be the quintessential mathom: a family heirloom that curses your root!

"My Halmoni (Grandmother) gave this bottle of ginseng liquor as a gift long ago when my parents were newlyweds. My dad always had plans to open this bottle and have a drink when he retired from the Army. My dad didn't have the heart, I guess, to open the bottle since it had been with us from the start. Dad gave the ginseng liquor to K when we were newlyweds. K had the intention of opening the bottle when he graduated from college. The big day came and went and the bottle still remained intact without a drop missing. K, too, didn't have the heart to open the bottle. Unintentionally, this gift had been turned into a heirloom."

Vintage Lane Stitches shows off some heirloom needlework and observes; "Imagine making and sewing lots of these, by hand, with feather stitch onto a big piece of material to make a bed spread, this big.Lots of patience required I think. My husbands Nan made this quite a few years ago using some of the material out of his mum's and aunties old dresses."  Gorgeous stuff and wonderful memories.

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."  At the Art Institute of Chicago, reports Hyperexperience there are holes in the wall that offer windows into miniature rooms of exquisite detail.

"The lilliputian rooms stand out in the city of big shoulder, not only for their size but because they only depict domestic, traditionally feminine spaces, namely kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms, and are filled with cues of the woman’s place in these societies. Most rooms feature a pace for sewing, writing letter, or cooking; almost all contain furniture for receiving groups of people, as well as children’s toys scattered about, but none contains any tools which may have been associated with manual labor, industry and the male place. The Thorne rooms stand as a micro-monuments to domesticity, a striking counterpoint to Chicago’s contribution to our modern monumental vocabulary: the skyscraper, towering emblem of commerce and industry and anything but domestic or feminine in form or function."

Then there is the "house as mathom", such as the semi-detached in Headington, England that Out The Blog leads us to with the 25' shark impailed in its roof...

"No one living in Headington notices it much any more, but it caused a tremendous stir both locally and nationally on the day it appeared. It had been winched up by a crane overnight, and although the police were aware of what was going on they were powerless to do anything, as there is no law to prevent a man from putting a shark on his own roof."

Praises be.  I'm going to remember that when I decide to do some home improvements. Go here to see how the shark has eluded the best efforts of the municipal planning board to have it removed since 1986.

Damn Data / Cabinet of Wonders rolled out another installment in its marvelous Compendium of Curiosities series on May 20th.  Doctor Doolittle would be proud of this edition, and it even has the classic YouTube drama in which a pride of lions, some crocodiles, and a herd of Cape buffalo mix it up at a Kruger waterhole.  Not to be missed, especially the surprise ending.

So you wanna be a souvenier smashed penny collector?  Andy Fletcher's Custom Trains Blog may give you the bug.

Richard McGlauchlin's Oh, the Places You'll Go explains The Grandfather Paradox, and hence why timetravel is bound to create more mathoms than heirlooms.  I'm my own grandpaw, indeed.

But if you do have a hankering to go somewhere curious and exotic, AdmirableIndia recommends Chennakesava temple at Belur, Hoysaleswara temple at Halebid and Castle Rock Homestay, Chikmagalur.

So, if you've got, say, a shiny gold ring you can't bear to part with, it may be a mathom.  Or it may be The One.  Either way, we want to know about it. 

Cabinet of Curiosities will be on summer holiday until September.  If you would like to host a future edition, by all means be our guest.  And if your eye falls on a bargain, pick it up.  of such things are mathoms made.

Call For Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities #8 "Mathom Edition"

The 8th Cabinet of Curiosities Blog Carnival will be here at Walking the Berkshires on Monday, June 16st.  The deadline for you to send your nominations & submissions is 12:00 p.m. ET Sunday the 15th.  We are going to call this one the Mathom edition, which fans of Tolkien know refers to something for which Hobbits have no immediate use but are unwilling to throw away. 

"Bilbo had a corslet of mithril-rings that Thorin gave him.  I wonder what became of it?"

Any mathoms, heirlooms, keepsakes and ephemera you might have stashed away with a good story to go with them would be most welcome.   But we'll also take your story about your marriage to the Eiffel Tower.  Just spare us the wedding night photos...

Catching a Glimpse of the Soul

Chet Raymo's wonderful Science Musings Blog considers a John Singleton Copley painting of a young boy and his pet flying squirrel and asks;

"How is it possible that mere oil on canvas can capture the ineffable thing that separates us from brute creation?"

Read the whole thing.

Bad Clams

Red Tide seems poised to hammer the shellfish beds from New Hampshire to the Cape and perhaps beyond as it did three years ago. 

"The state Division of Marine Fisheries closed Cape Cod Bay shellfishing in Sandwich and Bourne yesterday afternoon. The rest of the Cape and Islands remain open to shellfishing. As a result of yesterday's closures, the coast of Massachusetts from the New Hampshire border to Cape Cod Canal is now off-limits to shellfishing.

Experts are concerned this spring's algae bloom will be a repeat of the devastating toxic algae outbreak of 2005, when shellfish bed closures stretched from Maine to Martha's Vineyard and Massachusetts sustained estimated losses of $3 million a week to fishermen and related businesses."

If it is in Bourne at the East End of the Canal, it will probably be in Buzzard's Bay at the West End in no time. All in all I'm unlikely to go Quahogging this weekend.

Cabinet of Curiosities #7: Ernst Haeckel Edition

This 7th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities draws its inspiration from the artistic vision of zoologist Ernst Haeckel. A staunch Darwinist, Haeckel established The Phyletical Museum for the theory of evolution in Jena, Germany.   His 1899-1904 Kunstformen von der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) is a masterpiece of blended art and science.  Haeckel was fascinated by natural forms and structures.  Stephen Worth of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive describes his evolutionary aesthetic:

"Haeckel saw no contradiction in his role as scientist/artist. In fact, he considered his work to be an expression of his own natural place in the world he was attempting to represent. Instead of approaching the subject from an objective viewpoint, he subjectively and selectively edited what he saw to reduce it to a form that appealed to him on a basic level as an artist. Thus, the scales of a fish become arabesques, and microscopic diatoms become beautiful sculptural forms. Haeckel was using nature's imagery to express his own inner nature."

A love of reinvented natural form is something Ernst Haeckel has in common with the creator of Wing's Castle.  Millbrook, NY, the town where I grew up, actually has two castles: Daheim Castle, the gatehouse to the Hitchcock estate where Timothy Leary was long a guest in residence in the 1960s, and Wing's.  Peter and Toni Wing have been building their castle for more than 25 years, often from found or salvaged materials, and it continues to grow organically as time and whimsy takes them.  One visitor reports:

"Where another castle might have a plain wall, Mr. Wing has crafted a face out of stone fragments. Where another castle might have a bathroom in the shape of a square or a rectangle, Wing's castle has one shaped something like a 3 leaf clover. Seeing the bathroom alone was worth the price of the tour, you will never see another one like it. Anyone who is a castle lover and is passing through the area where Wing's Castle is located (not too far from Poughkeepsie), should make an effort to stop and see this one." 

Visitors may visit the castle for a small fee.  Other examples of Wing's public art include a variety of figureheads, cigar store Indians, and such that he carved for Millbrook merchants, some of which are still still on display, and a bronze Civil War memorial statue in nearby Stanfordville.

J.L. Bell of Boston 1775 reveals that members of the Massachusetts delegation to the 2nd Continental Congress visited Edward Arnold's Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut.  It made such an impression on John Adams that two years later, he considered sending such "American Curiosities" as rattlesnakes "Upon a Hint, from one of our Commissioners abroad... across the Atlantic as presents to the Ladies."   I'm sure Marie Antoinette would have been enchanted with her very own pit viper, but maybe it was intended for the Dutch.

Antiquarian's Attic reports the discovery of the oldest parrot fossil ever, a rare bird indeed as it made its home in what is now Denmark.  Nicknamed "the Danish Blue", there is no word as yet as to whether this ex-parrot died while pining for the fjords.

I've become enchanted by the pioneers of color photography from the early 20th century.  Decades before Kodachrome there was Autochrome, and there still exist some truly spectacular collections of these extraordinary images.  One of the finest was created by French millionaire philanthropist Albert Kahn, who set out in 1909 to record the peoples of the world in true color and promote cross-cultural understanding.  London Kills Me shares a few of Kahn's photographs: a window to a vanished time when many of the people and places he recorded were about to be forever altered by modernity and global war.

I am also partial to clothing from other eras.  The very first post from the Jungle Trader, which celebrated its 1 year blogiversary this month, recommends pith helmets from Lock & Co Hatters of St. James St., London, while everything from frock coats to Victorian ladies accessories abound at River Junction Trade Company. Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities has a curiosity shop to meet your magic charm needs, which calls to mind a few choice lines from Richard Thompson I've been saving up for just such an occasion:

"I've got war paints, the skulls of saints, don't you want to see 'em
The blood of popes, and Tyburn ropes from the Black Museum
I've got Frederick Delius' finger, Wordsworth's tattoo
And I'm going to love you with everything, and I think you're going to love me too

I've got all the magic I need, all the magic I need."

The blog chrisblassternardone has a marvelous bucket list of amazing geological oddities on showcase.  This way for the Moving Rocks of Death Valley, the Eye of the Sahara, and China's Stone Forest!

Damn Data: Cabinet of Wonders offers the All Things Small Edition of its recurring Compendium of Curiosities.  See the cast of the Wizard of Oz dancing on the eye of a needle and lavish doll house created for Queen Mary, royal consort of Britain's George V.

Lenzbreakr's Weblog features one of San Franciso's architectural oddities: The Roman Columbarium houses cremated remains and personal items in small boxes representing the lives of the departed.  "This is a truly unique place, as the San Francisco Columbarium is the only remaining Roman-style Columbarium in the world. It’s a place in which people can think outside the box, while at the same time being dead, and inside a box."

In an aftershock from CofC #5, Brass Goggles clues us in to a rather Gothic steampunk alphabet done in decorative ceramic tiles.  $600 buys the lot.  Z is for Zeppelin, naturally, but N is for No Man's Land and X is for Xenophobe.

L. H. Crawley's The Virtual Dime Museum has two submissions this month.  With Hasegawa's Untearable Crepe, a post that just missed the deadline for CofC #6 and has been patiently waiting for this edition, she shares images from a marvelous children's book from around 1900 made of crepe paper, a Japanese form called Chirimen-bon.  This month she shifts from the sublime to the ridiculous with a feature on sheet music about rat poison, an early advertising jingle pushing nearly pure arsenic that is "Rough on Rats!"  All together now!  "R-r-r-rats, rats, Rough on Rats! /Hang your dogs and drown your cats!"

Almost as fine a bit of brand marketing, according to Bioephemera is a dead lion, bees and syrup! 

Bill West of West in New England is collecting funny place names and invites you to join in.  See if you can top his Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.  One of my personal favorites from Central Massachusetts.

Small & Big considers the noble spoon and muses why Shakespeare didn't say “He hath need of a long chopstick that eateth with the devil.”

eArtfair collects a grand assortment of portraits of the artist's mother from the likes of Rembrandt, Haring, Picasso...

Thomas MacEntee discovers a portrait of a different sort.  The subject was his Great Uncle and the artist was Bil Baird, who was also the puppeteer who designed and performed the Lonely Goatherd sequence of The Sound of Music!  A fabulous discovery and a great tale besides.

And so we come full circle with art inseparable from life.  Haeckel may not have crafted marionettes, but he would have recognized their forms in the filaments of jellyfish.  But who, or what, is the the puppet master: a deity or strands of DNA?   Divine what you will.

The 8th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities will be on June 16th.  Anyone who wishes to host a future edition is most welcome to do so.  Submissions for June are due by noon EST on the 15th and can be made directly at greensleevesenviro AT sbcglobal DOT net or with the handy submission form.

Hop to It

Instead of crying in your increasingly expensive beer, time to get in early on the hop revival.  People may cut back in other areas when times are tight, but they are unlikely to give up beer.  There was a time when central New York was the leading hop producing region in the country - 1879 and 1880 yields peaked at over 60 million pounds per year.  Downy mildew, aphids and Prohibition killed the crop, but new vigorous varieties and pest control strategies mean that hops could be viable in the Northeast United States once more.  And now with a worldwide hops crisis, demand could make this a very wise investment.  Some craft brewers are now growing their own hops. 

Doubtless there are processing and quality control issues to work out, but if I had 10-20 agricultural acres, I'd be planting hops (though not the invasive Japanese variety).  And if the market should suddenly become glutted, there is always cellulosic ethanol.

Don't Got Milk

Here's a swell idea. Tax dairy farmers for the methane produced by flatulent cows.  Now it is true that cows produce more greenhouse gas than any other source, including vehicle emissions.  Yes, livestock are major resource consumers and yes, overgrazing, deforestation and a host of other ills can be pinned on unsustainable farming practices.  But taxing the farmer for cow farts is a bit like punishing the prostitute and not the Johns.  Estonians must not like milk.  The Kiwis made a stink about a similar measure in 2003.

Climate Change and Game Theory

Perhaps you have encountered "The Prisoner's Dilemma."  This mainstay of Game Theory offers individuals the opportunity to maximize the chances of personal reward through cooperation in a non-zero-sum outcome.  Two prisoners, the scenario goes, are picked up and charged with the same offense.  Each is offered the opportunity to cooperate and plead to a lessor sentence, or betray the other and possibly get off Scott free or possibly be accused of conspiracy and get the maximum sentence.  It you look at it rationally, players have a 25% chance of getting off, a 25% chance of getting the book thrown at them, and a 50% chance of a minor sentence. 

In the long term, the rational choice is to cooperate.  In the short term, the rational choice is to take care of oneself.   If offered this chance a single time, individuals tend to bet the house on getting off and screwing the other guy.  This is not unlike Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, which posits that communal land invariably gets exploited by individuals for personal gain at the expense of the rest.  This leads to degradation of the shared resource on which everyone depends.  In The Prisoner's Dilemma,  the odds of getting doubly screwed are actually greater than 25% in the short term. If offered this option multiple times, at some point players should realize that it is to their mutual advantage to cooperate.  Choices are made in isolation, though, and so the degree to which one party trusts the other to do the logical thing becomes a factor.  If you have multiple opportunities to choose, with the last choice including a possible massive payout but also a possible massive penalty, players tend to forget the odds and the advantages of cooperation and go for it all, and with it, ensure their mutual destruction.

I have seen this played out where there were four teams and each had a representative who met with the others to decide which course of action to take.  The logical choice was to go for the minor benefit over the big payout with its potential big loss.  The problem was that one team that consistently and rationally chose to cooperate was blown away when the other three did not choose to follow suit. In the end, all lost, but the lone cooperator lost sooner.

Let's try this in a hypothetical Global Climate Change scenario.  Suppose we as individuals and governments are given these options.  We can choose to maintain our own consumption and pollution patterns or we can make adjustments to the way we live.  If you choose to maintain the status quo and I decide to make adjustments then you benefit, I don't, and our children may be worse off.  If you choose to make lifestyle changes and I don't, the same thing happens in reverse.  If we both choose to make adjustments, we experience minor impacts and our children may not experience a worse situation.  If we both decide to do nothing, it gets worse for all of us and for the next generation.

If you buy this premise, then what outcome would you expect?  Those who believe that human nature is  inherently selfish rather than collective will likely point out that there is little reason to trust others to do the right thing, and indeed there is a 25% chance that we will be worse off for making the choice to make changes while others do not (but if everyone thinks this way, we all lose).  Those of you who believe that climate change is a bunch of hooey can go along with the first group. Those of you who believe that we can be rational actors may point out that the logical choice is for everyone to make adjustment to mitigate the impacts of climate change and make the changes.  Anyone want to guess how this would play out?

Of course, this is overly simplistic.  People are unlikely to accept these as the only choices.  Some don't believe anthropogenic climate change is real.  Some live in areas which are unlikely to experience dramatic changes under current climate projections.  Some want more proof that the option offered will truly bring about the predicted outcomes.  The thing is, if we risk cooperation, do we necessarily wreck our economy, ruin our standard of living, and end up being screwed by those who choose not to do so?  Or is the wiser course to make the changes now, in the belief that the consequence of being wrong about climate change is not as great as the consequence of being right and doing nothing?

Have at it in the comments.