Hanchinal Lake, Bijapur
Bird of the Day: Marsh Sandpiper
Hanchinal Lake, Bijapur
Crop Swap LA & Other Microfarm Advances
Illustration: Julia Louise Pereira/The Guardian
Our thanks to Victoria Namkung for this reporting in the Guardian, from Los Angeles:
‘Everything is natural and tastes so good’: microfarms push back against ‘food apartheid’
Crop Swap LA founder Jamiah Hargins in the Asante microfarm in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Valérie Macon/AFP/Getty Images
Bipoc-led local farms in unconventional spaces decentralize systems that have produced food deserts and create food equity
On a recent Sunday morning in South Los Angeles, Crop Swap LA volunteers and staffers harvested bags of freshly picked produce from the front yard of a residence. Located just steps from Leimert Park Plaza, the Asante microfarm is the first of what will be numerous microfarms created by the organization, which is dedicated to growing hyperlocal food on unused spaces “in the neighborhood, exclusively for the neighborhood”. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Cabani’s Ground-sparrow
Ujarrás, Cartago, Costa Rica
More On Merlin Sheldrake, Fungi & Related Matters
Merlin Sheldrake, author of the best-selling book “Entangled Life.” Alexander Coggin for The New York Times
We are grateful to any publication that gives this topic its due attention, in this case the New York Times and a particular thanks to Jennifer Kahn for such a thoughtfully written profile:
The Man Who Turned the World on to the Genius of Fungi
A vast fungal web braids together life on Earth. Merlin Sheldrake wants to help us see it.
One evening last winter, Merlin Sheldrake, the mycologist and author of the best-selling book “Entangled Life,” was headlining an event in London’s Soho. The night was billed as a “salon,” and the crowd, which included the novelist Edward St. Aubyn, was elegant and arty, with lots of leggy women in black tights and men in perfectly draped camel’s-hair coats. “Entangled Life” is a scientific study of all things fungal that reads like a fairy tale, and since the book’s publication in 2020, Sheldrake has become a coveted speaker.
A pied bleu (Lepista personata), also known as the field blewit. Alexander Coggin for The New York Times
At talks like these, Sheldrake is sometimes asked to answer a question he poses in the first chapter of his book: What is it like to be a fungus? The answer, at least according to Sheldrake, is at once alien and wondrous. “If you had no head, no heart, no center of operations,” he began. “If you could taste with your whole body. If you could take a fragment of your toe or your hair and it would grow into a new you — and hundreds of these new yous could fuse together into some impossibly large togetherness. And when you wanted to get around, you would produce spores, this little condensed part of you that could travel in the air.” There were nods. In the audience, the woman next to me gave a long, affirming hum. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: White-throated Bee-eater
Sanaga River, Cameroon
About That Rocking Chair
There’s been no enormous hurry in Washington to do much about the greatest threat that humans have ever faced. Photograph by Kevin Dietsch / Getty
Thanks, as always, to Bill McKibben for a perspective on otherwise difficult-to-make-sense-of events:
Looking at the White House Through Wildfire Smoke
This week, elected officials can see for themselves why they must get serious about climate change.
I’m sitting on a rocking chair just outside the White House fence on Thursday afternoon, and I can more or less make out the seat of American executive power through the haze. In the morning, the local government announced that the air-quality index for the District of Columbia had reached Code Purple (“very unhealthy”), because of the level of particulate pollution, which has never happened before. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Spot-winged Grosbeak
Male
San Francisco, Still A Pioneering City
A rooftop wetland on the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco filters wastewater from sinks and showers for reuse. JEREMY GRAHAM / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Our thanks to Jim Robbins, as ever, for environmental news from the front lines and for demonstrating that for all its urban challenges San Francisco remains a pioneering city:
Beyond the Yuck Factor: Cities Turn to ‘Extreme’ Water Recycling
San Francisco is at the forefront of a movement to recycle wastewater from commercial buildings, homes, and neighborhoods and use it for toilets and landscaping. This decentralized approach, proponents say, will drive down demand in an era of increasing water scarcity.
Ryan Pulley of Epic Cleantec holds a beaker of graywater. Right: A beaker of potable treated graywater. TED WOOD
In downtown San Francisco, in a cavernous garage that was once a Honda dealership, a gleaming white-and-blue appliance about the size of a commercial refrigerator is being prepared for transport to a hotel in Los Angeles. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Spot-winged Grosbeak
Female
Ghana Says No Thank You To Europe’s Fast Fashion
Some of the 6m items of clothing that arrive at Kantamanto Market each week. With the rise of fast fashion in the west, more is discarded as the quality drops. Photograph: Muntaka Chasant/Rex
When the clothes cast off by the wealthy are cast on to those less wealthy, it should be done so according to the golden rule:
Stop dumping your cast-offs on us, Ghanaian clothes traders tell EU
With 100 tonnes of clothing from the west discarded every day in Accra, ‘fast fashion’ brands must be forced to help pay for the choking textile waste they create, environmentalists say
An aerial view of Kantamanto market in Accra, where 100 tonnes of secondhand clothing a day are discarded. Photograph: Misper Apawu/The Guardian
A group of secondhand clothes dealers from Ghana have visited Brussels to lobby for Europe-wide legislation to compel the fashion industry to help address the “environmental catastrophe” of dumping vast amounts of textiles in the west African country. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Painted Bunting
Male
Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, Gillespie County, TX
Pottery Tradition & Modernity
Mr. Biscu makes pieces using clay that comes from earth extracted from a hill in Horezu.
Chantel Tattoli reported this story from Horezu, Romania for the New York Times. Accompanied by photographs and video by Marko Risovic, her story is based on speaking to a dozen local potters using a translator:
Can Old-World Ceramics Survive Modern Tastes?
A style of pottery made for centuries in a small Romanian town has recently become a hot commodity.
Sorin Giubega at his home, which is filled with ceramics made by him and his ancestors.
Sorin Giubega’s grandfather was a potter. So was his father. And at 8 years old, Mr. Giubega said, he started to play on a pottery wheel, too.
Mr. Giubega, now 63, and his wife, Marieta Giubega, 48, are potters in Horezu, Romania, a town in the foothills of the Capatanii Mountains about three hours by car from Bucharest.
Horezu is home to a community of about 50 artisans who make a traditional style of ceramics with methods that have been practiced for more than 300 years. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Orange-tufted Sunbird
Sanaga River, Cameroon
Indigenous Food Foraging
Prickly pear cacti, which produce Twila Cassadore’s favorite fruit. Photograph: Gabriela Campos/The Guardian
Samuel Gilbert was in Bylas, Arizona, on the San Carlos Apache Reservation to report this article, which contains excellent accompanying photographs by Gabriela Campos.
We thank the Guardian for this coverage of indigenous heritage:
‘It healed me’: the Indigenous forager reconnecting Native Americans with their roots
Twila Cassadore hopes teaching Western Apache traditional foodways can aid mental, emotional and spiritual health
Twila Cassadore gathers wild pearl onions on a foraging trip in the San Carlos Apache Reservation in April. Photograph: Gabriela Campos/The Guardian
On a warm day in April, Twila Cassadore piloted her pickup truck toward the mountains on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona to scout for wild edible plants. A wet winter and spring rains had transformed the desert into a sea of color: green creosote bushes topped with small yellow flowers, white mariposa lilies, purple lupines and poppies in full bloom.
Cassadore picks the petals off a flowering cactus during a foraging trip. She uses the petals in salads. Photograph: Gabriela Campos/The Guardian
Cassadore and I drove up a rough dirt road that used to be an old cattle trail, passing through various ecosystems, moving from Sonoran desert to grasslands and piñon-juniper woodlands. In each area, Cassadore would stop to gather desert chia seeds, cacti flowers and thistles.
Cassadore stopped her truck beside a three-leafed sumac bush brimming with fruit. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: American White Pelicans
Granger Lake Willis Creek Wildlife Area, TX
Miyazaki, Trees & Authentic Experience
The magazine sent the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi to Ghibli Park on a day when it was closed to the public, and she took along her daughter and some friends. Rinko Kawauchi for The New York Times
Links to the writings of Sam Anderson have not appeared in our pages before, and I almost missed this opportunity because at first appearance this article does not fit the norm for our themes. But if you read to the end, it does so in one clear way. It has to do with the power of nature, trees in particular, and once you read the article you will understand (if you are familiar with our platform). You can also listen to an audio version of this article here, but be sure to see the photos in the original publication:
Spirited Away to Miyazaki Land
What happens when the surreal imagination of the world’s greatest living animator, Hayao Miyazaki, is turned into a theme park?
A Totoro-like climbing structure. Rinko Kawauchi
As an American, I know what it feels like to arrive at a theme park. The totalizing consumerist embrace. The blunt-force, world-warping, escapist delight. I have known theme parks with entrance gates like international borders and ticket prices like mortgage payments and parking lots the size of Cleveland. I have been to Disney World, an alternate reality that basically occupies its own tax zone, with its own Fire Department and its own agriculture — a place where, before you’ve even entered, you see a 100-foot-tall electrical pole along the freeway with Mickey Mouse ears. This is a theme park’s job: to swallow the universe. To replace our boring, aimless, frustrating world with a new one made just for us. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Fire-breasted Flowerpecker
Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal Pradesh
Lehua Kamalu Captains Hōkūleʻa,
This half hour podcast episode may be your best gateway to a weekend of healthy distraction:
She Sails the Seas Without Maps or Compasses
For nearly 50 years, a group of Hawaiians have been sailing on traditional voyaging canoes using the methods that early Polynesian explorers relied on to navigate the Pacific Ocean—without maps and modern instruments, and relying on the stars, ocean waves, birds, and other natural elements to guide them. We meet National Geographic Explorer Lehua Kamalu, the first woman to captain a long-distance voyage on Hōkūleʻa, a double-hulled Polynesian canoe that was built in Hawaii in the 1970s. She describes what it’s like to navigate in incredibly rough waters, what it means to keep Polynesian navigation alive in the 21st century, and about her next big adventure: a four-year circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean.
When Disney became the owner of Fox Entertainment’s assets, National Geographic Partners was part of the deal. We never appreciated National Geographic’s association with Fox Entertainment, nor do we think Disney is much better a fit, but we can still appreciate when they do something right.
Bird of the Day: Blue-faced Malkoha
Koonthankulam, Tamil Nadu
Snow Lab & Melting
Water released from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir’s O’Shaughnessy Dam flows into the Tuolumne River. The reservoir currently supplies drinking water to 2.7 million San Francisco Bay Area residents. Photograph by Aubrey Trinnaman
We are gratified to know of such a place as a snow lab, and that their scientists share their knowledge in language we can all understand:
California’s Snow Is Melting, and It’s a Beautiful Thing
By Andrew Schwartz.
Dr. Schwartz is the lead scientist and station manager at the University of California, Berkeley, Central Sierra Snow Lab.
Photograph by Aubrey Trinnaman
SODA SPRINGS, Calif. — My fellow Californians often remark that the weather in this state seems it has been reduced to two seasons, both defined by natural disasters: In summer and fall, huge, intense wildfires rip their way across dry land, and winter and early spring bring intense atmospheric rivers with heavy rainfall, floods and landslides, along with winds that take down trees. Continue reading
Organikos 