Anachamayam – Elephant Decorations
Photo credits: Dileep
In Kerala during temple festivals, elephants are decorated with gold caparisons (Nettippattom), bells and necklaces. People mounted on the elephants hold ornamental umbrellas (Muttukuda) up high, swaying white tufts (Venchamaram) and peacock feathers fans (Alavattam). Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Green Bee-eater
Bangalore, Karnataka
Uthrattathi Vallamkali – Aranmula
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
The world famous Aranmula boat race will be held this year on September 20th. The uthrattathi Vallamkali sees 26 boats participating in the two days of festivities. The festivities involve the oarsmen singing traditional boat songs and wearing white Mundu and turbans. The boats are decorated with golden lace at the head of the boat and a flag and ornamental umbrellas in the center. Continue reading
Photography, History, Destiny
There is more than one photography-history-literary continuum buff out there for whom this link-post is intended. One is our erstwhile contributor of great photographic compositions and written reflections on his own photographs; as Milo heads west, he heads toward history. His family history, at minimum. His Inman predecessors first headed west centuries back when Kansas was the great frontier. But this guy is always looking forward while his brother puts some perspective on it all, taking a closer look through the rearview mirror.
Milo follows in the footsteps of several generations of painters, photographers and printmakers in his family who all headed west. One of them, in San Francisco now, has even shown an affinity for Civil War era photography of the type reflected on in this article on the Atlantic‘s website, so we shout this one out to Milo, Seth and Paul in particular:
Let’s play a short, highly contrived game, called called “Smile or Grimace?”
Here’s Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman, an officer of the Federal Army, photographed during the war:
Library of Congress
Poet, Publisher, Arboreal Millionaire
Dennis Publishing staff planting native broadleaf saplings for The Heart of England Forest project that has planted one million trees, Warwickshire. Photograph: The Heart of England Fores
We like, therefore we link:
A scheme by one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs to reforest the heart of England planted its millionth tree.
Poet and publisher Felix Dennis said he was proud to have planted the first 10% of his ambitious vision. “I’m hoping that long after I’m dead that the charity I founded will one day be the proud possessor of 25,000 acres of woodland planted with 10 million native broadleafed trees, completely open to the public,” he said. Continue reading
Gamboa, Panama
Bird of the Day: White-necked Jacobin
An Early Great, Revealed
At first glance, it might seem to be a group of photos from the box of one of those street vendors in Paris. Not so, as Luc Sante points out in the New York Review of Books:
Charles Marville is best known for his government commission to photograph the neighborhoods of Paris slated for demolition during Baron Haussmann’s reconfiguration of the city between 1853 and 1870. In fact, that is virtually all he has been known for, a matter the authors of Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris are eager to rectify. Continue reading
Malampuzha Dam – Kerala
Malampuzha Dam
The biggest irrigation reservoir in Kerala, Malampuzha Dam, is located in the Palakkad district. Beautiful gardens, an amusement park and a rock garden surround the lake, made even more picturesque with the Western Ghats as the background.
Franzen’s Dilemma
Photo by Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images
It is going to be our generation’s contribution to the colloquial cliche; equivalent to Catch 22. Maria Bustillos makes the best case, in the fewest and least heavy words. for a great writer to change his mind. She is compelling. But he is an activist for a good cause, so we must be in his corner, even if it is just wiping the sweat:
Jonathan Franzen has a real gift for getting people into a tizzy. This time, the fracas was occasioned by a September 13th essay he wrote for the Guardian (“What’s Wrong With the Modern World”) excoriating our “media-saturated, technology-crazed, apocalypse-haunted historical moment” and lauding the early-twentieth-century Viennese satirist Karl Kraus, whose essays Franzen reveres, as a prophet for our own times. Though the essay’s specific criticisms are so familiar as to be unremarkable—he writes that Salman Rushdie “ought to have known better” than to “succumb” to Twitter, and rages against Amazon’s depredations of the book trade and the various hegemonies of Apple—in the few days since its publication, the author has been accused of irrelevance and cane-shaking, his sex life and his digestion have been impugned, and Rushdie told him to “enjoy [his] ivory tower”; he’s been called “an old windbag,” “a whingeing miseryguts,” and a “Chardonnay bore,” and has been generally dragged through the digital mud. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Juvenile Golden-crowned Sparrow (Mount Roberts Trail, Alaska)
Fish Or No Fish, Take Stock
When asked why they recycled, 89% of people in 2010 identified the danger of climate change as a motivator. Photograph: Alex Segre/Rex Features
As a member of the science and technology select committee I am delighted to have secured and be participating in an inquiry into public understanding of climate change.
As we have interviewed expert witnesses and considered a range of written evidence, one thing has struck me in particular. While there is an ongoing public discussion on climate change that needs more scientific input and greater participation, a clear development in recent years has been the rise in the numbers of people prepared to do something about climate change. Continue reading
Emerging Photographers , Subscribe
We have been experiencing an acceleration in the growth rate of our admiration for the New Yorker‘s embrace of its digital future. We believe this erstwhile magazine is worth a subscription. We have nothing to gain by saying so other than the theoretical possibility that more subscribers and visitors to their site makes their recent innovations and improvements more worthy of more such experimentation. Such is our social media obligation: to point out to our friends what we take note of. Earlier this month we noticed this and neglected to share, but we correct that now:
As part of our ongoing Emerging Photographers series, today we’re highlighting the work of Sara Cwynar, a Vancouver native who lives and works in Brooklyn. I have been following her work for a while, and was drawn in particular to the monochromatic “Color Studies” as well as the series “Accidental Archives”—both of which drew on a confluence of literature, kitsch, and photographic tropes, which she cites as inspirations. Most recently, Cwynar has been preparing for her solo show, opening this week, at the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, where she will début a new collection of photographs called “Flat Death” (a reference to Roland Barthes). I caught up with Cwynar to find out more about the exhibition and her latest work. Continue reading
Murugan Kavadi
Photo credits: R R Ranjith
The Kavadi festival is celebrated at all the shrines of Lord Murgha, the second son of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvathi. The Kavadi is a short wooden pole supporting 2 bent pieces of steel or wood with two baskets at each end. Devotees carry this structure that can weigh up to 30 kilos across their shoulders. Continue reading
Fish Stock
A display of Sea bass for sale at Billingsgate Fish Market in London. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Seth got us started with historical perspective on this topic a couple years back, and Phil recently created the most popular series of posts of the year, also on this topic; we have even tried sharing a sense of humor when possible. But grim tidings continue:
First it was the cod, then the haddock, the swordfish and even the anchovy – now sea bass looks likely to join the list of no-nos for eco-conscious dinner party menus.
Stocks of the palatable species have sunk to their lowest in the past 20 years, according to a new assessment by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-necked Stork
Bharatpur, Rajasthan
Urban Pollination Studied By Seattle’s Citizen Scientists
Thanks to this coverage commitment we came across the video above and this accompanying explanation:
…Marie Clifford and Susan Waters, graduate researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, have found a way to get around scarce research funding: citizen scientists. The Urban Pollination Project (UPP), co-founded in 2011, takes Seattle community gardeners and trains them to collect data on local bees. Tapping into citizen scientist efforts, Clifford and Waters can gather data from 35 Seattle community gardens – a scale of research otherwise outside of their resources and funding capabilities. Continue reading
Pulikkali – Kerala
Photo credits: R R Ranjith
Pulikkali, which means “tiger play”, is a popular folk art form, also known as Kaduvakali. This iconic Onam event is mainly practiced in the Thrissur and Palaghat districts of Kerala. Participants painstakingly paint their bodies like tigers and don tiger masks. (The process can take the entire day to complete with first the removal of body hair and then the application of multiple layers of paint.) The procession also includes men representing hunters. The best performers are chosen out of the hundreds of participants. Continue reading
Really, Karnataka?
Forest near Daroji Sanctuary, Karnataka; photo credit: Seshadri K.S
We’ve stated before that our site is not dedicated to outrage, but we do make an effort to point out questionable environmental decisions by corporations and countries when we see them.
So when it came to our attention that the minister of tourism in the Indian state of Karnataka was spearheading a plan to create a zoo/wildlife safari within the buffer zone of the Daroji Bear Sanctuary we had to take notice. According to Santosh Martin, honorary wildlife warden for the region
The fragile ecosystem is home to critically endangered species of both animals and plants including pangolins, sloth bears, wolves, leopards, etc., which are classified as Schedule I by the WPA. This site is also a breeding ground for the Indian eagle owl, brown fish owl and possibly the blue tailed bee eater. More than 150 bird species have been documented in this area by naturalists which include the yellow-throated bulbul, painted spur-fowl, painted sand grouse, etc. Continue reading
Organikos 