Bird of the Day: Peacock (Pudukkottai, India)
Hatched Hats
For several decades after the 1880s, seeing birds on women’s hats in the United States was very common. It was fashionable to have everything from a couple flowing plumes to a whole pheasant on a hat; the ornithologist Frank Chapman found forty species in the millinery district of Manhattan.
Less than a decade earlier, wild passenger pigeons had gone extinct in North America, due to unfettered hunting and deforestation. It looked like the same was happening to several other species, but instead of being hunted for food like the pigeons, these other birds were killed solely for their bodies or feathers.
Snowy egrets and great white egrets were nearly decimated … The millinery trade in the 1880s and 1890s cleaned out tern, heron, gull and egret rookeries up and down the Atlantic coast, from Maine to the Florida Keys. Continue reading
Gulf Of California Partnership
Reviewing events in the region since I was last there, I came across this news (three years late, for something this interesting, is better than never to learn about it). WWF, to its great credit and the world’s benefit, found creative ways to partner with entities during the time since I completed my small task for them. Listening to this man speak on behalf of the aquarium, I see the enormous educational impact such an institution can have (and here I must acknowledge that I have always found zoos and aquariums melancholia-inducing places, with charismatic mega-fauna trapped in relatively small spaces for us to muse over; but I am changing my perspective):
The WWF press release at the time started:
Long Beach, Calif., April 30, 2008— Described by Jacques Cousteau as the world’s aquarium, Mexico’s Gulf of California is one of five marine ecosystems in the world with the highest diversity of wildlife.
Can Your Horoscope Do This?
Living in India has really highlighted the cultural differences of things that I have often taken for granted. How we meet our future spouses is most definitely a case in point.
My culture certainly has its fair share of well meaning friends, relatives and co-workers who have the “perfect person” in mind for someone to spend their lives with. Even if one doesn’t wish to avail themselves of this advice, it is often persistently given. Barring that, people meet frequently at school, parties, conferences, libraries, sporting events, airports…the list is endless, and one has to wonder at the statistics of how frequently those serendipitous meetings lead to long term relationships.
In Kerala (and I believe the rest of India as well) there is still a tradition of family involvement in the choice of life partner. Historically there was always an “auntie” (the catch-all name for an older, married woman) who has just the right match for young men and women of their acquaintance. But times are changing and computers and the internet have taken a role in this process, whether it be “on line dating” in the Western world, or “matrimonial sites” here.
I was recently shown a “print out” from an on line matrimonial site based in Kerala. Continue reading
Start Your Day Here
Bird of the Day: Lesser Whistling Duck
Bandipur, Karnataka
Mission-Driven Development in Baja California Sur
In the first third of the 17th Century the Spanish crown sent Jesuit priests to establish missions in what is now Baja California Sur. The fourth of these–Misión San Francisco Javier Vigge Biaundó–was active from 1699-1817. What is amazing is that the installation has remained intact even centuries after its last priest left (abandoning the missions at the gun-pointing insistence of the crown as independence movements fomented, which is a story worthy of your further investigation). Having found this particular oasis in the last third of the 17th Century, the priests cultivated grapes, dates, olives and other produce which, remarkably, still grow here today.
It is visually and olfactorally stunning to be in a place with the cactus and other desert flora native to the region Continue reading
Refresher
Pico Iyer: Global Soul
Deserted road on Tierra del Fuego
For me the whole point of travel is to leave yourself behind, to leave your assumptions behind, to become cleared out and to step into another person.
–Pico Iyer
Sometimes I have to wonder what kind of rock I live under. I mean, really! Despite my peripatetic lifestyle I seem to be strangely illiterate in “travel writer” terms. Busy “doing” perhaps? Perhaps.
So when I received an email from Diwia with a video link and the short note: “Great listening Amie, watch the first 15 mins – you’ll be hooked to the very end”. I clicked with the clear mind of the uninitiated. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Forest Wagtail (Thekkady, India)
Photo Reminiscence: Chinese Fishing Net (Fort Cochin, India)
The Eye of the Beholder
Chris Jordan, Caps Seurat, 2011
Seattle based photographer Chris Jordan has been making visual statements about mass consumption for over ten years. Using the “artist’s eye” to be able to step back from the overwhelming truths of societies’ excesses, he simultaneously breaks down that mass consumption into its smallest part and its incomprehensible whole.
Jordan uses commodities that are discarded daily–plastic and paper cups, newspapers, electronics–as the “brushstrokes” to illustrate the wastefulness in cultures of consumerism. His photographs place both conscious and unconscious behaviors under a microscope, which is often unsettling, and always thought provoking. Continue reading
La Giganta, Baja California Sur
As noted in the first and second posts on this topic, the question at hand is whether there is a formulation that can effectively bring thousands of hectares of private lands into a conservation area that is supported by entrepreneurial activity. That activity puts conservation and social welfare of the local communities as the top priorities–the motivation for bringing conservation-minded travelers to valorize these protected areas.
Bird of the Day: Malabar Parakeet (Thekkady, India)
Wonder Wheels
Crunch
Hans Gigginger photo from The New Yorker
I consider myself a pretty adventurous eater. In fact, I will easily go so far as to call myself a “foodie”. I’ve spent my adult life living on various continents, trying to understand the history and culture of the cuisine wherever I was living. I’ve patiently explained my dinner party plans to vendors at Parisian fromageries (in hopes they will approve and allow me to complete my purchase). I’ve “mastered” what I like to call Kitchen Croatian, or a knowledge of food nouns in that language, to be able to market and somewhat communicate recipes to kitchen staff while living there. Malayalam still totally eludes me, but it is one of the world’s most difficult languages after all, so please don’t hold that against me.
But to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never eaten a bug Continue reading
4-Minute Symphony
Gulf Of California
I had not been exposed to the corridor known as La Giganta, which you can see in the background of the above photo, when I carried out my work on behalf of WWF several years ago. Now that I have, over the last week, I can only say that it had such an impact on me that I am still processing it. It is partially the geology of this portion of the peninsula known as Baja California Sur. It is partially how that geology intersects with the marine ecosystem. But it is mostly–and here I refer to the impressions I am still processing–the intersection of local people with those two natural wonders that really got to me. The photo above looks from the back of a panga (the type of boat local fishermen use) as we departed a property that is best described as an oasis. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Nilgiri Fly-catcher
Munnar, India
Summer In Perspective
It has been about three weeks since I left Kerala but my joyful and peaceful memories are still very fresh. Living in the midst of skyscrapers of Seoul, I occasionally try to break free from all the busy, noisy, and exhausting life of the city and reminisce about the warm and welcoming smiles of Cardamom County staff, endless green of the Periyar Reserve, and the fresh and cool air blowing in from the Western Ghats.
After I arrived in Korea, I could not post here until now, and I want to give a sum up of my experience in Kerala, India as soon as possible. The photo above, randomly selected from those I took over the summer, is a visual reference point for what I can say now. Continue reading
Organikos 