Train Rider, Writer
A postwar ad for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
We link on occasion to good travel writing. It can inspire discovery. It can bring novel forms of attention to community, collaboration and conservation. Sometimes writing while traveling is the point. It may sound like merely a romantic notion, but apparently it is also a practical consideration that trains can make for good writing conditions. We ignored this story when it first came up in several of the publications we track as the source of controversy about whether this writer had any ethical dilemmas to wrestle with (the best summary of those issues can be found here). Now that we read her piece in the Paris Review, we take it at face value:
I am in a little sleeper cabin on a train to Chicago. Framing the window are two plush seats; between them is a small table that you can slide up and out. Its top is a chessboard. Next to one of the chairs is a seat whose top flips up to reveal a toilet, and above that is a “Folding Sink”—something like a Murphy bed with a spigot. There are little cups, little towels, a tiny bar of soap. A sliding door pulls closed and locks with a latch; you can draw the curtains, as I have done, over the two windows pointing out to the corridor. The room is 3’6” by 6’8”. It is efficient and quaint. I am ensconced.
I’m only here for the journey. Soon after I get to Chicago, I’ll board a train and come right back to New York: thirty-nine hours in transit—forty-four, with delays. And I’m here to write: I owe this trip to Alexander Chee, who said in his PEN Ten interview that his favorite place to work was on the train. “I wish Amtrak had residencies for writers,” he said. I did, too, so I tweeted as much, as did a number of other writers; Amtrak got involved and ended up offering me a writers’ residency “test run.” (Disclaimer disclaimed: the trip was free.)
So here I am. Continue reading
Mathematics & Community
Alexander F. Yuan/AP Images
This article, in the Atlantic, at first seemed to have nothing to do with our core themes of community, collaboration or conservation, but reading it to the end, we see that on the contrary there is a strong link. All three of those words are closely connected to education, which is closely connected to economic opportunity, which is closely connected to the feasibility of conservation, our deepest concern. Plus, many in our realm can attest to childhood mathematical experiences, many unpleasant, that might not after all be required to develop aptitude and appetite for what is after all just another language:
The familiar, hierarchical sequence of math instruction starts with counting, followed by addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division. The computational set expands to include bigger and bigger numbers, and at some point, fractions enter the picture, too. Then in early adolescence, students are introduced to patterns of numbers and letters, in the entirely new subject of algebra. A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, which is considered the pinnacle of high-school-level math. Continue reading
Raja Ravi Varma
Photo credits: Dileep
Born in the princely state of Travancore, Kerala (1848 – 1906), Raja Ravi Varma is considered among the greatest painters in the history of Indian art. Influenced by the Western tradition of art, he initiated a new movement of oil paintings on canvas in India, bringing to the life portraits and dramatic scenes from Hindu mythology and imbuing them with three dimensional qualities.
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A Man, A Plan, A Canal
Palm trees in the tiny fishing village of Brito. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American steamship and railroad tycoon, developed a route across the Nicaraguan isthmus, and his passengers transferred from stagecoach to steamship here. Photograph by Jehad Nga.
When Xandari joined Raxa Collective in December, the Central America map became important in our office, and in our news tracking. Several contributors to Raxa Collective got their start in Central America in the 1990s, as did most of Xandari’s staff, most of whom have been working their for nearly two decades; so goings on in that region are of special interest. Big goings on are of big interest. Especially when the socio-economic costs and benefits are understood in relation to ecological impact. In case you never heard the campaign slogan dating back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s time–A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama–it is worth noting it is a palindrome, a sort of word puzzle in that it reads the same forward and backwards. In this week’s issue of the New Yorker, another kind of puzzle related to another Central American canal is reported by Jon Lee Anderson who profiles one (or more) man’s plan to:
…“launch the largest civil engineering and construction project in the world: a new transoceanic canal across Nicaragua.” The canal is a pet project of Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua, who has argued that an Atlantic-Pacific shipping route “will bring well-being, prosperity, and happiness to the Nicaraguan people.” But while the canal’s supporters have praised its economic potential—Nicaragua is Central America’s largest and poorest country, and nearly half its population lives below the poverty line—opponents have criticized the lack of public input on the plan, which is expected to cost at least fifty billion dollars. They also argue that the project represents an affront to Nicaragua’s sovereignty: the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, an obscure Chinese firm that holds the concession to build the canal, has been granted broad rights throughout the country, including the right to expropriate and develop private property. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red-backed Kingfisher
Darwin, Australia
UK Chef Uses Celebrity To Shame Dodgy Fish Retailing
A catch of tuna from an illegal purse seine fishing vessel is loaded onto a cold storage vessel off the Indonesian coast. Photograph: Alex Hofford/AFP/Getty Images
Bravo to one Top Chef who is using his media power to good effect, a story we thank the Guardian for reporting (click the image to the left to go to the source):
Tesco is facing the wrath of TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and environmental pressure group Greenpeace after stocking a cut-price brand of tuna linked to a controversial fishing method that can kill sharks, rays and turtles.
The supermarket switched its own-label canned tuna to environmentally friendly pole-and-line caught sources in 2012 in a high-profile change after criticism from Fearnley-Whittingstall and his Fish Fight campaign. But later the same year Tesco began to stock the Oriental & Pacific brand of tuna, which is caught using the purse seine method – where large nets scoop up all kinds of ocean creatures attracted by floating rafts known as fish aggregation devices. Continue reading
Alleppey Beaches
Alleppey
Popularly known as the “Venice of the East”, Alleppey is situated at the south-western tip of Vembanad Lake where it was the the major port of the erstwhile Travancore State. Alleppey Beach is known for its calm and quiet spirit and as a gathering place for family and friends to enjoy the fresh air, sea breeze and the most spectacular sunsets on Kerala’s coast. Continue reading
Wondrous Sound, Studied And Explained
We have posted many occasions on the topic of reducing noise pollution. We care about sound, and promote the reduction of man-made versions of it when it is not needed. The author of the book (click the image to the left) is interviewed on Fresh Air and in the podcast of that conversation he explains many sound phenomena in a manner understandable to a lay person.
One of the most interesting findings of his scientific work will delight our many bird-oriented readers: collecting data from thousands of subjects on their sonic preferences (as well as sounds they can least tolerate) the sound of bird calls, natural or recorded, rate among the most loved by humans:
Ever wonder why your voice sounds so much better when you sing in the shower? It has to do with an acoustic “blur” called reverberation. From classical to pop music, reverberation “makes music sound nicer,” acoustic engineer Trevor Cox tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. It helps blend the sound, “but you don’t want too much,” he warns.
Cox is the author of The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World. He has developed new ways of improving the sound in theaters and recording studios. He’s also studied what he describes as the sonic wonders of the world — like whispering arches and singing sand dunes. His sonic travels have taken him many places, including the North Sea, where he recorded the sound of bottlenose dolphins underwater, and down into a revolting Victorian era sewer, where he discovered a curving sound effect he’d not heard before. Continue reading
Lexicon of Sustainability
Thanks to the Public Broadcasting Service of the USA for the video above and these links to sustainability-focused terminology, in this case related to Food Waste:
Nearly 40 percent of the food we grow, distribute, put on store shelves then ultimately buy as consumers never gets eaten. It’s called food waste and people are doing something about it by gleaning, composting, and learning to eat from head to tail to eliminate waste.
Food Terms
Food waste
“Forty. That’s the percentage of food in this country that never gets eaten, or that’s grown and never comes to market. It’s the food we distribute that never reaches a destination or sits on grocery store shelves without finding a consumer. And it’s food consumers buy but never eat. “
– Douglas Gayeton, LOCAL: The New Face of Food and Farming in America Continue reading
Periyar Sightings
Elephant
Sightings in the Periyar Tiger Reserve have always been an excitement for guests. It’s fun to see the animals from the boats but it’s even more enchanting to see them up close during treks in the reserve. These photos were taken by Cardamom County guest Mr. Oliver Wyatt, who was most delighted to share his experience.
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What Do Mammoths And Passenger Pigeons Have In Common?
Passenger Pigeon Extinct 1914. Billions of the pigeons were alive just a few decades earlier. Like the other animals shown here, it has been proposed for de-extinction projects. Credit Stephen Wilkes for The New York Times. Passenger pigeon, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.
He had me at mammoth. When he added passenger pigeon, I demonstrated the definition of click bait. I had to learn more. I will reserve judgement for now, but can recommend your reading what I have just read. Both species may be back in business soon, with the assistance of de-extinction science according to this story in the current New York Times Magazine. Not far from the beginning of the story, this fascinating letter is excerpted:
…Brand became obsessed with the idea. Reviving an extinct species was exactly the kind of ambitious, interdisciplinary and slightly loopy project that appealed to him. Three weeks after his conversation with Flannery, Brand sent an email to Church and the biologist Edward O. Wilson:
Dear Ed and George . . .
The death of the last passenger pigeon in 1914 was an event that broke the public’s heart and persuaded everyone that extinction is the core of humanity’s relation with nature. Continue reading
New Energy Possibilities, Reported Long-Form
Commercial reactors modelled on ITER could generate power with no carbon, virtually no pollution, and scant radioactive waste. Illustration by Jacob Escobedo.
We pepper this blog with long-form journalism’s best contributions to our knowledge about environmental and cultural issues that seem relevant to community, conservation and collaboration. This week’s New Yorker has an article that stretches the boundaries of serious reporting on alternative energy, worth every moment of reading (it is about as long as long-form gets; click the image to the right to go to the source):
Years from now—maybe in a decade, maybe sooner—if all goes according to plan, the most complex machine ever built will be switched on in an Alpine forest in the South of France. The machine, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or iter, will stand a hundred feet tall, and it will weigh twenty-three thousand tons—more than twice the weight of the Eiffel Tower. At its core, densely packed high-precision equipment will encase a cavernous vacuum chamber, in which a super-hot cloud of heavy hydrogen will rotate faster than the speed of sound, twisting like a strand of DNA as it circulates. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-necked Stork
Bharatpur, Rajasthan
Understanding India, Day By Day, Book By Book
The majority of Raxa Collective’s contributors are Indian, but increasingly many of us are non-Indian (North American, European, Latin American, African, etc.) and some of us have been living in, observing and trying to understand India for years now. We find this book’s title (click to go to the source), and especially the blurb that goes with it on the author’s website, compelling:
A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India’s past and present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans – everyone really, except for Indians themselves – came to imagine India. Continue reading
Cinematic Lunchbox View Of Life in Bombay
THE LUNCHBOX by Ritesh Batra – International Trailer
Between the trailer (click above) and the review in the New York Times (see below), The Lunchbox looks worth seeing for audiences in India and abroad–thanks to India Ink for point us to it:
“‘The Lunchbox,’ Ritesh Batra’s debut feature, is a romance that takes place in Mumbai, but its style is more Hollywood than Bollywood, and Old Hollywood at that,” A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote in his movie review. Continue reading
Ottamthullal – Classical Dance
Photo credits: Shymon
Ottamthullal is a very popular form of classical performing arts of Kerala. The actor wears a long ribbon of cloth looped around a waistband to form a knee-length skirt. A chest plate adorned with coloured beads, glass and various ornaments covers the upper body, and tinkling bells are tied to the legs. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Newly-hatched Whimbrel (Churchill, Canada)
Leap Seconds Become Leap Years
One of our contributors is a leap year baby, so we take note at the passing of each February into March, without always remembering why on certain years there is an extra day. Today our office team celebrated that birthday, rather than doing so tomorrow, thinking it is better to be early than late. Here is a secondary explanation from the Atlantic‘s Alexis Madrigal:
The mechanics of the leap year are well known: We add a day to February every four years to maintain the synchronization of our earthly calendar with the celestial reality of the Earth’s orbit.
Weeelllll, it turns out that a similar phenomenon plays out on a much smaller time scale. Along with the leap year, there is the leap second. Continue reading
Kerala Butterflies: Great Eggfly
Photo Credits: Aparna P
Great Eggfly butterflies are very common and found all over India, flying throughout the year and preferring forest openings and edges, as well as bushes and gardens. The male has black wings with white patches surrounded by blue iridescence (not pictured here), and also has a row of white spots and crescents along the edge of the entire wing. Continue reading
Organikos 