Photo credits: Dileep
Aliyar dam is situated in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. Constructed over a ten year period between 1959-1969, Aliyar dam is the source for canal irrigation for large tracts of agricultural lands in the bordering regions of both Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Continue reading
Paul Kingsnorth. Photo by Kenneth O Halloran
Collapsitarian sounds decidedly like the opposite of our approach on this platform, but in this profile I recognize observations and motivations, and even actions if not conclusions, out there among the practitioners. Read the story in this week’s New York Times Magazine:
By DANIEL SMITH
After decades of fervent environmental activism, Paul Kingsnorth decided it’s too late — collapse is inevitable. So now what?
If that seems intriguing, and especially if you want to smile and even laugh a bit, visit Paul Kingsnorth’s website:
OAQs
(Occasionally Asked Questions)
Could you puff yourself up in a few paragraphs of third person prose please?
Certainly. Paul was born in 1972. He studied modern history at Oxford University, where, as well as studying, he edited the student newspaper and was politically radicalised by his involvement in the road protest movements of the 1990s. Continue reading
Kabini Backwaters, Karnataka
The Large Flowering Sensitive Plant, whose ‘plant electricity,’ Oliver Sacks writes, ‘moves slowly…as one can see by watching the leaflets…closing one by one along a leaf that is touched.’ Illustration from Robert John Thornton’s The Temple of Flora (1799–1807), published in a new edition by Taschen.
Thanks to the New York Review of Books for engaging one of the great thinker-researcher-writers of our time for this story The Mental Life of Plants and Worms, Among Others:
Charles Darwin’s last book, published in 1881, was a study of the humble earthworm. His main theme—expressed in the title, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms—was the immense power of worms, in vast numbers and over millions of years, to till the soil and change the face of the earth. But his opening chapters are devoted more simply to the “habits” of worms.
Worms can distinguish between light and dark, and they generally stay underground, safe from predators, during daylight hours. They have no ears, but if they are deaf to aerial vibration, they are exceedingly sensitive to vibrations conducted through the earth, as might be generated by the footsteps of approaching animals. All of these sensations, Darwin noted, are transmitted to collections of nerve cells (he called them “the cerebral ganglia”) in the worm’s head.
18 April 2013
Prepare the International Day on Monuments and Sites!
India does not appear on the Events list, but no matter. We take matters into our own hands. Cardamom County‘s relationship with its neighbor, Periyar Tiger Reserve, is stronger than ever; River Escapes has been a pioneer of ecological good practices in Kerala’s backwaters; and now Spice Harbour is contributing to the renaissance of Mattanchery. We encourage our readers, if close to any of the events, to join in:
At the heart of the work of ICOMOS lies the understanding, the protection and the conservation of those structures, sites and ensembles whose interest is linked to history and memory. The value of these elements of our cultural heritage is associated with the history of societies and peoples, as well as the arts and sciences they developed.
Sighting of the day
It has been a while since we have shared our guest sightings at the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Some guests carry cameras to capture every moment and some just like enjoying the moment. Our reception chalk board gives people the opportunity to share those experiences with others–in this case not in photos but their memories.
In case you do not already know about him and his writing on topics related to modern technology as it intersects with the law, the post excerpted below by Tim Wu is a good place to start. It seems possible to simultaneously agree with the specific point of this post, and also be confused with the general implication. Agreement could stem from reading enough of Tim Wu to implicitly trust his expertise. Confusion could stem from the itinerary planning screen-captured and shown above, which reminds that not everything we buy is re-sellable. Still, we click “Hold” to ponder this just a bit more to hopefully clear the fog:
…we tend to overlook the milder forms of truth-stretching that have come to shape online living, and it’s hard not to. They’re often perpetuated by big and reputable companies, like Apple, Seamless, and Amazon.
Take search. General search sites, like Google and Bing, are pretty straightforward: you type in a query and get results ranked by some measure of relevance; you also see clearly marked advertisements. This experience tends to shape our expectation that searches deliver relevant results. But the same search on sites like Amazon or Seamless turns up not only relevant results but disguised advertisements, as well. Continue reading
Scientists believe wrinkle-lipped bats could prevent annual paddy losses of nearly 2,900 tons, enough to feed 26,000 people for a year. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA
Good news out of Thailand for both bats and rice and also for the concept of mutually beneficial coexistence:
Bats that prey on a major rice pest in Thailand could save paddy harvests worth millions of dollars and help contribute to better food security, claim scientists in a paper published in Biological Conservation.
Photo Credit: Renjith
Pesaha Appam is a traditional food made by Kerala Christians only during Maundy Thursday, the Thursday of holy week. The eldest member of the family blesses and cuts the Appam and distributes it to the rest of the family members. Continue reading
Atanasio, a cliff-face opening in the Sierra de Juárez mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. The mountains are home to the Chevé system, some eighty-five hundred feet deep—potentially the deepest cave in the world.
The writer who brought you the inside scoop on wild things gone wild, brings you a journey deep into the earth:
On his thirteenth day underground, when he’d come to the edge of the known world and was preparing to pass beyond it, Marcin Gala placed a call to the surface. He’d travelled more than three miles through the earth by then, over stalagmites and boulder fields, cave-ins and vaulting galleries. He’d spidered down waterfalls, inched along crumbling ledges, and bellied through tunnels so tight that his back touched the roof with every breath. Now he stood at the shore of a small, dark pool under a dome of sulfurous flowstone. He felt the weight of the mountain above him—a mile of solid rock—and wondered if he’d ever find his way back again. It was his last chance to hear his wife and daughter’s voices before the cave swallowed him up. Continue reading
Jeffrey Arguedas/European Pressphoto Agency
I was rushing through an airport recently, in transit between one workplace and another, when the man in the picture above walked past me and our eyes connected; we both stopped. We were not in his country or mine. There was no reason for him to remember who I was, but I had good reason to greet him with “Mr President, you are looking well.” The man has not seemed to age a day since I first met him nearly 20 years ago.
To my astonishment, he recognized me and reminded me that our last meeting was in his office in Costa Rica with a group of conservation-oriented investors interested in that little country’s commitments to its national park system. Oscar Arias played an important role, as President nearly three decades ago, and then again as President in the last decade, innovating a more sustainable future for the national park system, and these investors were interested to hear his views.
Lest anyone misinterpret this as an exercise in name-dropping, my point in mentioning this is very much the opposite. Costa Rica, to use a great metaphor from an otherwise not great sport, “punches above its weight class” in conservation, in health indicators, in education, and even in happiness.
This explains its success in attracting foreign direct investment, and makes all the more remarkable that a Nobel laureate who has twice been president of Costa Rica is approachable and friendly, generous with his time. It is the Costa Rican way, without regard to status. He has time to say hello to a random gringo in an airport. He has time to come to India to say hello to the 15o million new voters (added to the hundreds of millions of experienced voters) engaged in the current exercise of the world’s largest democracy: Continue reading
Photo credits: Jayaraj
Pottan Theyyam is a colorful ritualistic dance that forms an integral part of the cultural scene in North Kerala. Dressed in ribbons of tender coconut leaves, with his face hidden behind a mask, the Theyyam dances in a frenzied spell, throwing himself on burning red hot embers and walking on fire without getting burnt. Continue reading
51-spiced vegetables, wrapped in chickpea crepe, with summer tomato coulis
It is good to sit by the water at lunchtime, on occasion, and read while tasting something new (thanks, kitchen!). Here, an incidental passage from a book review that fit yesterday’s midday meal at 51:
…When my grandmother taught me to make banana pancakes, which we did every Wednesday night through much of my childhood, she would counsel “Hold the bowl” as I stirred, which became, in our letters to each other, code for “I love you.” At the beginning of Nigel Slater’s memoir “Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger,” the author puts it this way: “It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you.”
Surely none of this was on my mind on April 5, 2013, when I purchased “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone,” by Deborah Madison. I had, exactly a month previously, met a swell fellow, who happened to be vegetarian… Continue reading
Photo Credits: Jithin
Commonly known as the Golden Shower tree, the flowers of the Indian Laburnum are an integral part of Vishu, the planting festival of Kerala. This delicate flower graces the ritual arrangements in homes all over Kerala. Continue reading
When we were kids, we used to wait with great anticipation for Vishu– which falls around the 14th of April each year. Actually it depends on the Malayalam Calendar, and this year it falls on the 15th. Most Keralaites, especially the older generation, go by the Malayalam calendar for birthdays or any other auspicious occasion.
Vishu is a happy festival, filled with lights, fireworks and bursting crackers as part of the celebration. Other elements of Vishu include the buying of new clothes for the occasion, the tradition of giving money called Vishukaineettam and the culinary treat, the Vishu feast or Sadya.
The most important event in Vishu is the Vishukkani, which means “the first thing seen on the day of Vishu after waking up”. Continue reading
Clockwise from top left: Rain forest in Corcovado National Park; a tapir in the park; a cabin at Bosque del Cabo Rainforest Lodge; spying on a toucan at the lodge. Credit Scott Matthews for The New York Times
As might be guessed from many of the sources linked to here, several of us are fans of long-form narrative and some enough so that we listen to a podcast dedicated to interviewing long-form journalists. We love well-crafted descriptive wording. Our friends in Costa Rica generally, and the Osa Peninsula especially, must be delighted to have Amy Harmon‘s long-form knowhow working in their favor in this week’s Travel section of the New York Times.
By almost unbelievable coincidence, while wearing the shirt to the left (selfie by yours truly, dear reader) I was listening to a podcast interview with Amy Harmon at the moment this article–what first caught my eye was the title about travel to Costa Rica–came onto my screen. Then, seeing it was by Amy Harmon I had to read it immediately for another reason. We have a large collection of posts dedicated to science writers and their craft, but none yet dedicated to her work (this post is the first step of correcting that negligence). Below, excerpts of the description of the experience she had at Bosque del Cabo, a property where many of our guests who stay at Xandari also visit, and vice versa:
…Our first stop, Bosque del Cabo, was a 40-minute ride by taxi from Puerto Jiménez, the biggest town on the peninsula with a population of 1,780. I had chosen one of the two cabins at Bosque just steps from the rain forest, at the edge of a large clearing planted with native trees and plants. A half-mile away from the main lodge area, these “garden cabinas” are reached by a trail through the forest that crosses high above a river over a suspension bridge… Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
In Kerala, Palm Sunday is called Hosanna Njayar. Celebrated by Christians the world over on the Sunday before Easter, which fell on April 13th, in 2014. Churchs have special services and ceremonial processions attended by hundreds of believers carrying tender palm leaves to be blessed by the priests. Continue reading
Organikos 