While I personally don’t focus on organized religion, I can’t deny the power of sacred music to uplift my spirit. This story of inspired Renaissance composition and modern-day curiosity resonates with historical sleuthing and musical puzzle solving.
Click on the Sound Cloud musical links, close your eyes and breathe deep.
Eight years ago, leafing through a bibliography of 16th-century music prints (like you do), my eye was caught by the title of a motet: “Salve sponsa Dei.” “Bride of Christ,” I thought. “Must be for nuns!”
It was one of 23 anonymous motets published together in 1543, so I did what any self-respecting nunologist would do, and ordered a reproduction of the book. As I put the motets into a usable edition for modern singers, I found they were unlike any other 16th-century music I’d ever seen. They were dense, intense and sometimes startlingly dissonant.
The music – for five equal voices (of unspecified sex) – is astonishingly beautiful and yet strange, radical even. These works had lain unsung and unloved for almost four centuries, mostly because they were anonymous. These days, anonymity suggests that whoever created the book, music, painting or whatever was not important enough, or the product is not good enough, for anyone to care who made it. But in the 16th century, anonymity was also an important way for members of the nobility to disguise their participation in commercial ventures that were considered beneath them (which is why Gesualdo, a prince, published his madrigals anonymously).
But Virginia Woolf was right when she said: “Anonymous was a woman.” Continue reading →
Varieties of space dust, barely the width of a human hair. These photomicrographs were made with a special camera setup that magnifies the dust grains nearly 3,000 times.CreditJan Braly Kihle/Jon Larsen
After decades of failures and misunderstandings, scientists have solved a cosmic riddle — what happens to the tons of dust particles that hit the Earth every day but seldom if ever get discovered in the places that humans know best, like buildings and parking lots, sidewalks and park benches.
The answer? Nothing. Look harder. The tiny flecks are everywhere.
An international team found that rooftops and other cityscapes readily collect the extraterrestrial dust in ways that can ease its identification, contrary to science authorities who long pooh-poohed the idea as little more than an urban myth Continue reading →
Norms have developed on the sightings board at Chan Chich Lodge over the years; unusual birds and apex predators get most of the attention most of the time.
howler monkey
And for good reason. But on a day to day basis, monkeys are almost always in the trees in close proximity to the lodgings. The variety to the left is a noisy one, territorial and vocal in a manner that you will recognize from the soundscape of whatever King Kong movie you might have seen. Urbanite guests seem to favor that noise, we have noticed. Continue reading →
From a cartwheeling spider to a fish that hops on its fins and a katydid species that uses drumming to communicate, scientists are finding about 18,000 new species each year. Conniff reveals that so far, humans have identified about 2 million species, and the total number may be anywhere from 10 million to 100 million. He traveled to the remote country of Suriname on the northeastern coast of South America to take a firsthand look at what species discovery is all about.
We recommend this interview (click the Listen button in the banner above) with Richard Conniff on one of the WNYC programs we depend on for variety of perspectives as we pay attention to news about wellness, biodiversity and other topics of interest. Thanks to Smithsonian magazine for publishing Conniff’s story:
A newly discovered katydid species uses drumming to communicate. (Piotr Naskrecki)
It has been four years since we last noted his birthday and the most recent public event we can find now is this video is from two years ago. 65 is a suitable birthday to merit coming back to a favored writer and thinker with a small celebration. Neil Gaiman, starting at about nine minutes in to this video, pays fitting tribute to his friend, and ours, and what may have been his most important work.
Endangered pygmy elephants and orangutans threatened by scheme for Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary
David Attenborough and Steve Backshall have joined conservationists and charities asking officials in Borneo to reconsider a bridge that threatens one of the last sanctuaries of the rare pygmy elephant.
2006-2007 was among my favorite stretches of time, both for our La Paz Group work and for life with my family. We were living on an island in the Adriatic Sea where the only other residents were fishermen and their families. Besides learning how blissful life can be on an island, I learned that island people are somehow different from mainlanders. It seems to be a cultural phenomenon worldwide. So when I heard this story about life on an island in Hawaii, I was expecting to hear about differences; this is about as different as I have ever heard of:
A family that owns a private island in Hawaii sets rules for the people who live there. But when the rules are administered in an unpredictable way, the islanders get upset. Sean Cole and Adia White tell the story. (22 minutes)
We’ve written about this amazing APP on our pages before, and it’s exciting to watch it’s evolution and expansion of both technology and territory.
Our work has yet to expand to Mexico, but birds don’t acknowledge national borders, so the majority of the species in the Yucatan can be found in all 3 countries that make up the peninsula – Belize, Guatemala and of course, Mexico.
We look forward to having our marvelous guides try it out just for fun!
Merlin Expands to Mexico
We’ve spent the last few months working to expand coverage of Merlin, and we’ve just released a new bird pack for the Yucatan Peninsula. Research at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology repeatedly points to the Yucatan Peninsula as a vital wintering ground for many of our favorite breeding birds in the United States. It’s also home to many dazzling birds unique to the Neotropics. Continue reading →
Apart from those meditations our guests find time to relax in a hammock, reading. Whether on paper (we prefer its off grid feel), or even on modern devices (on which there are some clear advantages) reading is a perfect complement to the day’s action. The quiet contemplation is a perfect counterpart to the nature excursions, so we are pleased to see Jane Austen has more to say than any of us knew:
On March 18, 1817, Jane Austen stopped writing a book. We know the date because she wrote it at the end of the manuscript, in her slanting hand. She had done the same at the beginning of the manuscript, on January 27th of that year. In the seven weeks in between, she had completed eleven chapters and slightly more than nine pages of a twelfth—some twenty-three thousand five hundred words. The final sentence in the manuscript runs as follows: Continue reading →
This banner was displayed during the last 12 hours across more than one of the news websites we monitor daily, perhaps showing up on our browsers because of our featuring a reference to Patagonia’s activism here. We had also recently noted their action on Bears Ears. Regardless of why this banner ad reached us, we are happy to extend its reach. Click above if you are in a position to explore and take action on this particular campaign.
It is not the first time we have enjoyed a good long read about either of these companies’ and/or founders, but this one in the Guardian offers a good look circa 2017:
The retail giants are not only competing to sell outdoor gear – they are rivals in the contest to sell the thrill of the wilderness to the urban masses Continue reading →
A bright cabbage slaw and a flour tortilla complement corned beef’s fatty saltiness. Credit Melina Hammer for The New York Times
Vegetarians, look away. Guests who have enjoyed the food program at Chan Chich Lodge, and have visited Gallon Jug Farm, normally come to know our commitment to fresh, all natural menu items. Including some of the finest beef in the world. And fresh tortillas. And bright cabbage slaw. Habaneros nearby. And a cold Belikin beer to accompany the meal. As Chef Ram explores all the options that the farm allows for his kitchen, we can imagine him making good use of the book below, brought to our attention by the Food Editor at the New York Times:
…You can do it easily, said Michael Ruhlman, a passionate advocate of the process and the author, with Brian Polcyn, of “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.” You need only start by corning your own beef. “You can achieve tastes that aren’t available in the mass-produced versions,” he said. “Also, it’s a genuine thrill to transform plain old beef into something so tangy and piquant and red and delicious.”
Corned beef takes its name from the salt that was originally used to brine it, the crystals so large they resembled kernels of corn. Curing and packing plants in Ireland used that salt in the 19th century to cure slabs of beef that went into barrels, later cans, and onto ships to feed, among others, British colonists, troops, slaves and laborers across the globe. Eventually someone in Boston or the Bahamas fished out a cut of beef neck or a brisket and boiled it into submission with a head of cabbage, and that was dinner. Continue reading →
In 2012 we started a string of posts featuring him, but have not linked to a Franzen-related birding story in a while. Best in epic category was likely here. Last time might have been here. He would no doubt love Chan Chich Lodge. If you appreciate his passion for birds, you should take a few minutes and listen to this, featuring him during an outing near his home:
Before achieving success as a novelist, Jonathan Franzen couldn’t imagine doing something just for fun. But now, he’ll spend an entire afternoon dodging puddles of manure for the pleasure of looking at birds, “these very visible, very beautiful, very intelligent bipeds who are a lot like us.” Through the “portal” of birds, Franzen says, we can get to know the natural world. He took our producer Rhiannon Corby along on a trip to MoonGlow Dairy, near on Monterey Bay, where the birds are as plentiful as the cow pies. Watch your step!
A booby doing its mating dance.Credit Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket, via Getty Images
We had missed one of our favorite science writers for a while and we are so happy she is back! In her latest outing, covering ground we thought was already familiar, we get some new clues to the meaning of their coloration and rituals:
With no real predators, the birds live proud, public lives. That accessibility has proved a bonanza for scientists, casting light on their mating habits and even why the shade of their feet matters.
A couple weeks back, there were a string of remarkable sightings, recorded by guests in a series of photos and then listed on the board by the Chan Chich Lodge reception area. That was a good preview for what happened yesterday, when guests arriving to the Lodge encountered a mature jaguar crossing the road. Continue reading →
Organikos 