DIANE ACKERMAN ON THE INTERNET January 30, 2009
Posted by thenaturalist in Internet, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
Diane Ackerman, who used the Internet while working on her book, The Zookeeper’s Wife, says: “The Internet is a volume in our library, a colorful, miscellaneous, and serendipitous one — but not a replacement for books, and certainly not an alternative to spending time in the world and just paying attention to things.”
LOVE December 26, 2008
Posted by thenaturalist in Love, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
Peter Jenkins, a home-schooled student I worked with when he was in high school, was quoted as saying the loveliest thing about a stream: “Getting to know Patten Stream is like a love that develops slowly. Each visit brings new surprises and enjoyment. Each stretch of brook. each day and hour brings a new mood …. I have been awed by the rushing water after a rainstorm and watching the mist settle over the beaver meadows at dusk.” I wish I could claim credit for having taught him to write like that, but these words and the thoughts and feelings they convey are all his.
BIODIVERSITY July 19, 2008
Posted by thenaturalist in E. O. Wilson, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
Edward O. Wilson, in his Foreword to a June 2008 collection of scientific essays entitled Sustaining Life, says: “We do not float above the biosphere in some higher spiritual or technoscientific plane. Life swarms around us, and even in us…. For many reasons, not least our own well-being, we need to take better care of the rest of life. Biodiversity … will pay off in every sphere of human life, from medical to economic, from our collective security to our spiritual fulfillment.”
ROGER TORY PETERSON ON NATURAL HISTORY June 12, 2008
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Roger Tory Peterson once wrote, “The serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person’s life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.” My feelings exactly . . . .
COLLECTORS AND COLLECTIONS May 24, 2008
Posted by thenaturalist in Curiosity, Interesting, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
In his 2007 book Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, Arthur MacGregor quotes 17th century philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon, as saying that a proper collection was “a model of universal nature, made private.” MacGregor, who is a curator at the Ashmolean Museum in England, shows that the “purposeful collecting” of Western European collectors embodied nothing less than revolutionary thought on cosmology and nature.
KENN KAUFMANN ON NATURAL HISTORY February 25, 2007
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When Birding magazine (Jan/Feb 2007) asked Kenn Kaufmann what he would do if he could have one wish to improve the world, Kaufmann replied: “My wish is that every person might learn to recognize fifty species of plants and animals native to his or her own region. That may not sound like much, but I’m convinced that it would profoundly change each person’s sense of values, each person’s sense of responsibility to the ecosystems that support all of our fellow creatures. That basic level of natural history could revolutionize our view of humanity’s place in the world. Maybe I’m just a dreamer, but I’m going to go on trying to communicate that basic appreciation of nature to everyone.” This answer could well be the mission statement of my own writing life….
WHAT’S WRONG WITH US February 16, 2007
Posted by thenaturalist in Interesting, Nature/Natural History, Phenology, Time.add a comment
D. H. Lawrence wrote: “Blood knowledge…Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of Love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magical connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is wrong with us. We are bleeding at the roots.”
EARTHWORMS June 3, 2006
Posted by thenaturalist in Darwin, Interesting, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
Darwin said of EARTHWORMS: “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world.”
PASSIONS June 3, 2006
Posted by thenaturalist in Interesting, Nature/Natural History.add a comment
Thomas Eisner, Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell, has this to say about his high-magnification photos of the scales on a moth’s wing: “There is proof in these images that science and art, while dwelling separately in the confines of our consciousness, do merge in that vague domain of the subconscious that guides us in our passions.”
ANCIENT RHYTHMS May 4, 2006
Posted by thenaturalist in Interesting, Nature/Natural History, Rhythm/Rhythms.add a comment
According to Sigurd Olson, “When one finally arrives at the point where schedules are forgotten, and becomes immersed in ancient rhythms, one begins to live.”
