The Casual Blog

May 28, 2023

Admiring rookery birds at St. Augustine

I drove down to St. Augustine, Florida, last month for the annual Birding and Photo Fest. These are some of my pictures of the remarkable creatures there, including great egrets, roseate spoonbills, tricolored herons, ibises, snowy egrets, and wood storks. It was a privilege to spend some time with them as they went about their business of finding food, repairing nests, mating, incubating eggs, and feeding chicks.

It took me over eight hours to get there, including lunch, gas, a couple of wrong turns, construction zones, and near the end, rush hour traffic. But I was glad to find I could still handle such a long drive by myself. I listened to several podcasts, and finished an audio course on Mozart.

I stayed in the Holiday Inn Express just across the bridge from old St. Augustine and convenient to the Fest activities. It was like other HIE’s – simple but bright and fairly clean – but it had one real problem: extremely thin walls, and when I was there, noisy guests. There was a group of teenage boys and dads around my room, which I guessed to be some sports team. They chatted, laughed, and argued almost all night.

I considered complaining either directly or via management, but they kept the noise just under the threshold of criminality. My premium ear plugs, effective against most noise, were no match for them, and I had a terrible night’s sleep.

Before sunrise the next morning, I was heading toward the St. Augustine Municipal Marina for a boat tour of the harbor area. The tour, by Eco Tours and led by Zack, focused on the bird life in the area. We didn’t spot any rarities, but it was fun to be on the water with the animals. A highlight was swimming manatees.

That afternoon I went to the first of several talks I’d pre-registered for about birds and photography. This one was by Jack Rogers, and concerned identifying shorebirds and getting good pictures of them. Rogers shared a lot of good tips, including other locations to check out in Florida.

Afterwards, I looked over the stalls in the main hall which were selling photographic equipment and promoting photography workshops and tours. I sat down with a fellow dealing in used camera equipment, and sold him one of my old lenses, a tripod ball head, and a macro rail I wasn’t using. I was happy to get the closet a little cleaned out, and add some cash to the wallet.

Then I drove to the Alligator Farm. The place is essentially a zoo featuring a lot of alligators and crocodiles from all over the world, but in the spring it becomes a rookery. A lot of large wading birds, including great egrets, snowy egrets, wood storks, herons, and roseate spoonbills, build their nests there and start new families.

A board walk above many alligators curves through trees, and the birds build their nests in those trees. Some nests are almost close enough to reach out and touch, and others not much farther. The birds sit on eggs, or feed the hatchlings, and fly back and forth to get new twigs for their nests. At times it’s relaxed and peaceful, but their are also unhappy hungry fledglings, squabbles between neighbors, and mating rituals between partners.

The birds come back to the Alligator Farm every year. I was told that they like building nests above the alligators, because the gators protect them from predators. This seems plausible. I saw birds drinking water and looking for new twigs quite close to alligators. I would guess that the birds keep a wary eye out, and the alligators realize that it’s quite hard without an element of surprise to catch an experienced adult shore bird.

I went to several more classes on photographic techniques, and came back repeatedly to the Alligator Farm. At one point, a roseate spoonbill (large pink bird with a bill shaped like a shovel) flew onto the boardwalk right at my feet to fetch a twig for its nest. A few minutes later it flew back to the railing, looked me over carefully, then dropped down again in front of me to get another twig.

Most of the time the alligators weren’t doing much, other than lying, walking, and swimming, but I did see a presentation by a young woman who stood in an area with them. She gave some fun facts and debunked some myths, such as the notion that alligators can run fast. Plainly, since she didn’t get eaten, they weren’t simply mindless, ruthless maneaters. She called some of them by name and described their personalities, and they opened up their mouths as she threw them a fish. They’re probably smarter than we’ve thought.

That seems to be true of most animals. I just finished reading The Creative Lives of Animals, by Carol Gigliotti. Gigliotti collects research on the creative activities of various species, like nest building of birds, tool use by chimpanzees, and problem solving abilities of octopuses. She shows that many animals learn from each other and their own experience, and experience emotions, like joy and sorrow, similar to ours.

The idea of animals as creative individuals and communities runs contrary to what I was taught, which was to consider them as mindless automatons, controlled in all respects by blind instinct. And that older paradigm is still widespread. There’s still so much we don’t know about their lives. For example, we know they communicate in many different ways, but we understand very few of their signals.

But we’re starting to learn, and to realize how much more there is to know. The more time I spend close to animals, the more certain I am that they are complex individuals, with personalities, problem-solving abilities, and joys and sorrows. They can inspire us with their beauty, athleticism, and fortitude. Also, they can be pretty funny.

April 28, 2023

Traveling to Africa, and getting back

Last week I was in St. Augustine, Florida, at the annual Birding and Photo Fest. I took a lot of pictures of the big birds at the Alligator Farm rookery, and will be sorting through those and sharing a few soon.

But first, I wanted to pass along a few more pictures from our March safari adventure in Botswana. Even though it was only a few weeks ago, it’s hard for me to believe all these animals are really there! So much of the earth has been taken over by humans, and there are only a few places where other animals still live their lives as they did long ago. Africa is really special in that way. It was a joy and a privilege to be there, and I look forward to going again.

However, the air travel to and from was far from pleasurable. To get there, we were scheduled to fly United from Raleigh to Washington to Newark to Cape Town. But our first flight was delayed, and the tight connection in Washington meant we had to change everything. We eventually got from Raleigh to Washington to Munich (overnight, with a ten hour layover in Munich), and then (after another overnight flight) to Cape Town. We were quite fried when we got to Cape Town, but the morning was sunny and mild, and our room at Noah House was charming. We slept for a couple of hours, and then went to find the Red Line bus stop for a little tour of the city.

On the way, we got scammed out of two credit cards. I’d like to think that things would not have unfolded so badly if I’d had my normal wits about me, but anyhow, I didn’t, and they did.

As we walked down the city street, a well-spoken man stopped us and said that they were shooting a movie on the street, and we needed to walk on another street. I’d seen movies being made on the streets of New York, so this didn’t strike me as particularly strange. As we were discussing this, another local man came up, and said he had the same problem. The first man pointed him in the direction he needed to go, and told us we should follow along.

We followed along around the corner and into a convenience store, where the fellow there said we needed to get a document. To do this, we needed to put our credit card in the credit card reader. We hesitated, but another man said there was no charge, and this was a normal requirement.

The credit card reader didn’t seem to be working, and one of the fellows offered to “help.” Then we tried a second card, which disappeared in the machine. Someone said that the machine was slow, and it would come out in a minute. After three minutes, I realized something was definitely wrong. The men in the store were gone.

Then a young woman appeared in the store. She said the men were scam artists, and they made her stay in the back of the store.

We were confused and shaken, but realized that one of the men was skilled at sleight of hand, and had made our cards disappear. Sally urged me to call the banks straight away, and I did. In the few minutes it took to get to the fraud departments, the scammers wracked up almost $40 thousand in charges.

We were not held accountable for the charges, which was good. And once we’d settled down, we were grateful that we hadn’t been held up at gunpoint or physically assaulted. Fortunately, we had one more credit card to use on the trip. Things could have been worse. But it was a rocky start. The one positive I took away was a dose of humility, and more sympathy for others who make big errors of judgment.

Our travel within South Africa and Botswana, by buses, airplanes, and boats, all went smoothly, but returning to the U.S. was brutal. Although I’d picked aisle seats when booking through the Chase travel service, United put us in center seats all the way back. Our route again involved a long layover, this time in Newark, trying to get to Washington, and then, finally, to Raleigh. We waited the better part of an hour at RDU to get our bags. Total door-to-door travel time: 43 hours.

But for all that, I’m so glad we did it, and already starting to think of our next trip there. We learned a lot about the animals, but there’s so much more to learn. Spending time with them also helps our thinking about other dimensions – the communities of big animals, the relationships between communities, their relationships with other forms of life, and our relationships with all of these.

April 17, 2023

Our vegan safari trip to southern Africa

In March Sally and I went to South Africa and Botswana for a safari adventure. It was a great trip in many ways, though the air traveling was grueling. I wanted to share some of the photographs I made, and an overview of the experience.

The trip was organized by World Vegan Travel (WVT), which puts together novel and elegant trips with vegan dining. For years, we’ve struggled to match our plant-based eating preferences with our adventure travels. It was wonderful to find that problem was solved: the vegan meals ranged from very good to amazing. Our fellow travelers were mostly vegans who had interesting life stories. Seb and Brighde of WVT were excellent leaders — thoughtful, cheerful, well organized, and resourceful. The trip photographer was Jennifer Hadley, a friend from Raleigh, who shared a lot of good ideas on how to make better images, and was generous in helping solve equipment and other problems.

Our trip involved two segments: 1. the Garden Route of South Africa, which runs along the coast east from Cape Town, and 2. safaris at two camps in Botswana. We found Cape Town lively and beautiful, and enjoyed exploring the Garden Route to the east of it by bus. One of the highlights was a two-day safari at the Gondwana Reserve, where we saw a cheetah and a two-week-old rhinoceros. The baby rhino was about the size of a pig, and frisked about like a new puppy.

After returning to Cape Town, we flew to Botswana and stayed at a camp in the Savuti area of Chobe National Park. We traveled in Toyota Land Cruisers and saw all the iconic species – lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, impalas – and quite a few others. We had our own spacious and pleasant cabin with all the modern conveniences (shower, toilet, electricity) except internet. It turned out to be therapeutic to get off the net for a while.

After Chobe, we flew in a small plane to the Okavango Delta, where we walked from the grass airfield on a raised boardwalk through the forest to our camp. Here, too, we had a pleasant cabin, and nice common areas for dining and relaxing. As in Chobe, we were strongly encouraged not to walk by ourselves in the camp at night, but instead to get a staff member to escort us, in case of animal encounters. Also as in Chobe, the hospitality of the staff was outstanding. In addition to great service, they shared with us singing and dancing.

The highlight at Okavango were boat trips in the channels, where there were a lot of hippopotami. These huge and strange animals can be aggressive, and kill more humans than any other large animal in Africa. We kept a respectful distance, and drew back a few times when they approached us.

We also did walking safaris on a couple of the islands, where we saw elephants, buffalo, impalas, and beautiful birds. One morning on a walk our guide saw fresh lion tracks. We were in tall grass, sometimes as high as our necks, and the guide began carrying his rifle with more purpose. I realized the lion could be a few feet away and invisible to us. We didn’t locate the lion, though it was the most exciting non-sighting ever.

On this trip, I became more conscious of grass. There were vast grassy areas, with many grass species. I finally understood why there were so many animals, like impalas, springboks, waterbucks, kudus, wildebeests, zebras, and buffalo, that subsist mainly on grass: there’s a lot of it! We saw most of those species in sizable herds. Grazing is a successful survival strategy. (By contrast, there are only a few species that eat other animals, and there aren’t very many of those.)

Of course, it’s exciting to see the rare animals, like leopards and cheetahs; they’re beautiful. But a lot of the joy I got from our safari experiences was watching the more common grazing animals living their lives. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to be an impala or a zebra, eating some grass when hungry and hanging with the herd.

I particularly loved the elephants, who are also plant eaters, and who generally live with family members. The herds we saw always included little ones, who were very cute. I realized that a lot of what gives the elephants purpose is taking care of the young. That’s true of many species, including us.

Being with so many remarkable animals can be a life-changing experience. It gives a different perspective on what life is for and about. It is more varied and vibrant than we usually see.

I’m planning to share a few more pictures from the trip soon, along with some stories of our air travel challenges. But first, I’m heading to St. Augustine for Florida’s Bird and Photo Fest. I’m hoping to get some good photographs of the big birds at the rookery there.

January 31, 2023

Ducks at Delmarva, bird rescues, and flu research

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I headed up to the Delmarva peninsula for a photography workshop featuring wintering ducks. We put on waders and got in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay near Cambridge, Maryland. There were hundreds of beautiful ducks and other water birds, flying in and swimming close.

From a distance, ducks on the water can look peaceful. But up close, it’s clear they swim fast and are constantly on the lookout. Their lives are not easy.

We also went to the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge to look for various other creatures, including short-eared owls. We saw various eagles, harriers, and great blue herons, a fox, and, after a lot of looking, a SE owl – my first, which was kind of a thrill. The sun was setting, but I managed to get one shot.

As much as I enjoyed seeing the uncommon birds, I also got joy from the more common ones. We see a lot of mallards in the course of a normal year, and it’s easy to forget about their amazing colors. I liked this flying shot, and also one of two mallard drakes having a squabble.

We saw a vast accumulation of snow geese grazing in a farm field. Something (maybe a fox) startled them, and they all took wing in an instant, with some of them headed directly at us. They made an amazing racket. It was so exciting I forgot to worry about the possibility of being hit by one of these good-size, fast fliers. We noticed after the big launch that a few birds were still on the ground, apparently wounded by collisions during the take off. Clearly, it’s not easy flying in a crowd.

The workshop was organized by Shoot the Light, Chas Glatzer’s outfit, and led by Joe Subolefsky. I had thought Chas would be the leader, and was disappointed at first to learn otherwise, but I was very happy working with Joe. He knew a lot about the wildlife and about making interesting images with mirrorless cameras (the kind I’m using now).

Speaking of birds, Sally and I had a special opportunity to visit the American Wildlife Refuge, a bird rescue center in Clayton, N.C. There were quite a few big birds there who’d been hit by cars or otherwise injured, including barred owls, a great horned owl, red-tailed hawks, broad-winged hawks, Cooper’s hawks, vultures, and a bald eagle. Most of these were on the road to recovery and were expected to resume their life in the wild. The barred owls were especially curious to see us, and sat together on a branch watching us intently.

We talked with the head of the organization, Steve Stone, who is a fully licensed and very experienced wildlife rehabilitator. He is effectively a full time volunteer who has devoted much of his life to helping injured birds. We were happy to be able to donate to support this work, and hope others will do so. The web site is http://awrefuge.org/

Until last week, I’d never volunteered for a medical research project, but I decided to sign up as a subject for a study of a new flu vaccine being developed by Pfizer. I met the age and vaccine criteria (over 65 and not vaccinated for flu). After a telephone interview, I went in for another interview, along with a physical exam.

It was more involved than I expected. But I got a shot of either the current flu vaccine or the experimental mRNA one. Other than the needle prick, nothing bad happened. And I got a non-de-minimis payment: $150!

January 7, 2023

Big white birds, intelligent bees, Ultra, and the tree lady

Last week I drove to eastern North Carolina to check on the visiting wild birds. Some hundreds of tundra swans were there. These big white birds nest on the Arctic tundra and migrate long distances to winter at places like Pungo Lake. They really are majestic, swimming calmly or climbing the air. I watched them for quite a while, flying, landing, feeding, preening, and having minor disputes.

Shortly after sunrise I also saw thousands of snow geese in a riotous murmuration, circling around a farm field, landing, then taking off again. It was thrilling. What were they up to? They vocalize as they fly, and perhaps they’re debating how to group themselves and where to go for the day. Or perhaps that’s just their ritual, their way to greet the sunrise.

We have a lot to learn about the minds of other animals. A new book I’m reading, The Mind of a Bee, by Lars Chittka, shows that most of what I was taught about bees back in the day was ridiculously wrong. Chittka, a professor, discusses the special qualities of bee perception, communication, and behavior. He makes a convincing case that individual bees have memories and solve complex problems of navigation, flower biology, and structural engineering. It’s hard not to conclude that they have a kind of intelligence.

On the drive out east, I listened to Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, Ultra. The subject is American Nazis in WWII, including a couple of dozen members of Congress who collaborated with Hitler’s government. One group, inspired by the rabidly antisemitic Father Coughlin (the most popular radio personality of his time), stockpiled arms and planned to overthrow the U.S. government.

I enjoy learning about American history, and like to think my knowledge is above average. But the Ultra story was a chapter I’d never heard anything about. I’d had the impression that in WWII, there was hardly any disagreement among Americans on the proposition that Nazism was wrong and needed to be opposed with all our strength. But thanks to Rachel and her team, I now get that it wasn’t that simple.

The January 6 insurrection, election denialism, QAnon conspiracy thinking, and the MAGA penchant for violence and repression now make more sense. As disturbing as these ideas are, it’s clear that they aren’t random or isolated.

Fascist fears and longings have been part of our story for a long time. For some, there’s real appeal in the idea of finding unity behind an inspired dictator to beat down a supposedly grave threat. It’s easy to condemn this kind of extremism. But it’s better to understand it as part of a long-standing culture that adherents did not consciously choose. It might make us less judgmental and angry, and able to help the extremists calm down and perhaps find a measure of sanity and peace.

On a happier note, I was glad to see the Washington Post featured a good piece by Sarah Kaplan on Suzanne Simard. Simard is a pioneering plant biologist who made key discoveries relating to how trees in forests behave. (She was the model for a character in Richard Powers’ excellent 2018 eco-novel, The Overstory.) She discovered that mycorrhizal fungi connected to tree roots facilitate living forest communities.

Kaplan wrote, “Through decades of study, Simard and other ecologists have revealed how fungi and trees are linked in vast, subterranean networks through which organisms send messages and swap resources. The findings have helped revolutionize the way the world sees forests, turning static stands of trees into complex societies of interdependent species, where scenes of both fierce competition and startling cooperation play out on a grand scale.”

Simard’s current big experiment is called the Mother Tree Project. She’s designed different environments to see how trees and their associated fungi networks fare. It seems pretty clear that the logging methods generally used today are not sustainable, and she’s looking for a better way.

December 20, 2022

Some local birds, visiting Old Salem, off-roading in Uwharrie, and a few thoughts on biodiversity

I’ve been getting up early to photograph the birds at local lakes in Raleigh. The Canada Geese start flying right after sunrise, and most have gone elsewhere or settled back down for breakfast within 45 minutes. It’s fun to hear their discussions and to see them gathering and taking off.

After the birds have flown, I take a run around the lake, which is about 2 miles. Later I check the photos to see if any seem to say something non-obvious about the birds, and experiment with processing to see if that unusual element can speak any clearer. Here are a few that I liked.

Last weekend, Sally and I took a short holiday trip to Winston-Salem to see old friends and have a look through Old Salem, the restored Moravian town founded in the 17th century. We enjoyed seeing the town and learning a bit about colonial life there. A brass band played traditional carols in the square.

Although the dominant narrative of Old Salem depicts a harmonious and innovative religious community, I figured there must be some dissonant notes that were worth hearing about. We had a chats with a couple of the docents about difficult subjects, including slavery and subjugation of women. They were friendly and knowledgeable, and readily acknowledged that not everything was sweetness and light in the early days.

We were fortunate to get into the Candle Tea at the Single Brothers House without a reservation. There we had a nice time singing some Christmas carols, which were a happy part of our childhood, and hearing once again the Biblical account of Jesus’ birth. I’m not a believer any more, but I like that part of the Bible, in which all agree that a new baby is a miracle.

On a different note, a couple of days later I did an adventure driving trip to Uwharrie National Forest. It’s a large (50 thousand acre), mountainous (well, small mountains), green place in piedmont North Carolina. The Forest Service maintains trails there for hiking, horseback riding, and off-road driving. I wanted to test out my new Subaru Forester Wilderness, which claimed to be able to run off road with rugged 4X4s, at least to a certain point.

I stuck to the trails marked easy or moderate, which were a lot more challenging than I expected. There were various spots where big rocks, mud, and trees had to be negotiated while moving forward, sideways, and up or down, sometimes all at once. It reminded me of skiing black diamond trails — a lot slower, but similarly demanding and absorbing.

I used my Subaru’s special off-road gearing system, called X Drive, and made it back to the paved road with no substantial damage. I was proud of my Wilderness! The Uwharrie trails were closed for the winter on December 15, but we’re looking forward to more adventures in the spring.

It was good to see the NY Times prominently featuring a piece on biodiversity. As you may know, but many don’t, human civilization has caused enormous damage to other species. Per the Times, “a million species are threatened with extinction, many within decades.” Biodiversity is declining at the fastest rate in human history.

The Times piece made the case that humans should be concerned about the loss of other species, because it is likely to harm humans, including affecting food and water supplies. While that’s true, there’s more to it than that. Ruthlessly exploiting and destroying the non-human world is horrific and wrong under any definition of morality.

The threats to many species are caused by loss of habitat. This problem is separate from, but in places connected to, climate change. Humans have been gradually taking over huge areas where animals and plants once lived. One of the big problems is destruction of forests to create more areas of agriculture, with much of that agriculture related to feeding farm animals that are then slaughtered for food.

The Times piece noted that 200 nations have been holding a large meeting in Montreal with a view to addressing the biodiversity crisis. Just this past weekend, the gathering (uncharmingly nicknamed COP15) came to an agreement on the 30 by 30 solution: saving 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. This sounds like progress, certainly, though it doesn’t seem quite fair that one species (us) among millions would consider itself entitled to 70 percent of the planet.

Almost all of us have been taught that humans are a unique species that is superior to all others, and that we’re entitled to dominate and exploit other species in whatever way we like. This idea is so deeply embedded that it seems like part of nature, rather than just an idea. But some are starting to see that it’s a poisonous idea, almost impossible to defend in terms of reason or ethics.

Alternative conceptions of human life are possible. Life can be approached in terms of ecological systems, with the multitude of life forms having many interconnections with their environments and each other. Our human lives are connected in many ways to the lives of other species, and those connections are key to survival and happiness both for us and others.

For example, humans and other animals could not survive without plants that capture energy from the sun, and many plants could not survive without the insects and other creatures that pollinate them. The principle is simple, though the details are endless. The starting point is becoming aware of the diversity of life and the need for that diversity. That should make us less heedless. As we realize that our human wants and needs are not the only thing that matters, we become less miserable, and cause less misery.

Our current political problems, including extreme polarization, are closely related to our hierarchical view of the natural world. We put humans at the top of the pecking order, and rank animals and plants at the bottom. Most of us are taught that non-human life forms are worth thinking about only if they can be exploited or pose a danger to us. Thus we don’t know very much about the rest of nature, or even see the point of knowing more. This ignorance is part of the source of our biodiversity crisis.

This kind of hierarchical thinking also separates human groups, with the same result. That is, in our culture, we normally rank males over females, white over non-white, native over non-native, and so on, in an unwritten but intricate caste system, with privileges accruing in the top-most ranks and getting scarce in the bottom ones. The more privileged castes are taught to keep separate from those less privileged, and they come to fear those considered lower. The fear is understandable, as extreme inequality can make the less privileged angry and resentful.

Adopting an ecological approach to animals and plants could help us begin to overcome the worst of our human hierarchies. Under an ecological approach, we’d notice more of our interconnections, and the value of considering differing customs and viewpoints. Our polarized politics would be less polarized, because we wouldn’t be so fearful of our differences in appearance and culture. We’d likely find that, just as with the different ethnic foods we enjoy, our physical and cultural differences can be something to relish.

December 1, 2022

Starting to miss Antarctica and its animals

Looking back through the photographs I made on my Antarctic trip, I’m still reflecting on how challenging the voyage was. But I’m starting to think about how much I want to go back. It was uniquely beautiful, and thought provoking.

I came away with an enriched conception of non-human animals, and how humans can relate to them. It reinforced my view that there’s no inherent right for us to use them without considering them as communities and individuals. Even though it’s generally accepted, there’s something deeply misguided in our conception that non-human animals are inferior to humans such that they may be exploited as we see fit.

In rough Antarctic waters, the cooks and wait staff of the Ushuaia did a surprisingly good job of feeding us three meals a day, including providing something for the vegetarians on board. Both lunch and dinner included dessert, which I and my shipmates ate, sometimes because it tasted so good, and sometimes just to pass the time.

Anyhow, this all added up to a lot of desserts. The result was that now, weeks after the end of the trip, I still have no interest in anything sweet. My life-long sweet tooth has changed, which is probably a good thing.

Eating involves a lot of choices. I continue to think that a plant-based diet, involving little or no killing or exploiting animals, is best. It seems self-evident to me that needlessly and cruelly killing other creatures is wrong – fatal to them, and also demeaning to us.

The health benefits of a plant-based diet are also well documented. These include looking and feeling better, and lower risk of the common major diseases associated with eating animals, including heart disease, colon cancer, and Type 2 diabetes. If decency and health weren’t reasons enough, it’s becoming more widely understood that animal agriculture is a major contributor to global warming and all the destruction that comes with climate change.

These facts seem vitally pertinent to me, but most people manage to ignore them. It’s strange, but then again, it’s extremely common for people to carry around beliefs that have no relation to reality, and to tolerate risks that seem to me very worrisome. Fortunately, most of the time, an individual’s ideas don’t do much harm to the individual or to others.

However, I think our ideas about eating animals are more consequential, which is why I think they’re worth discussing. At the same time, I don’t want to pointlessly add to the general angst and feelings of hopelessness. Fortunately, the situation with animals is far from hopeless. In fact, moving away from eating animals and eating a healthier plant-based diet is not that hard. Lots of people are doing it.

Apropos of animals and food, this week I heard a new podcast with a focus on the lives of farm animals and industrialized farming. Leah Garces, president of Mercy for Animals, speaks with Ezra Klein about how the low cost of meat is not really such a good thing. The system is extremely profitable for a few producers, subsidized by taxpayers and protected by law, miserable for most of the farmers involved, and of course, horrific for the animals.

This food system seems fully entrenched, long supported by political and economic power. But, as with our changing climate, the chickens are coming home to roost: industrial animal agriculture is causing more deadly pollution, increased antibiotic resistance, animal-based pandemics, exhaustion of arable land, loss of rainforests, and of course, the psychological trauma of complicity in massive animal suffering. Again, the word is getting around.

On a different note, I’m continuing my project of reading “classic” novels that I encountered as a youth, and just finished one that intersects with issues of animals and food: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

This is a book some of us were forced to read in high school as one of the “great books.” I finished it last week, and didn’t think it was exactly great. The writing was sometimes clunky, and the shape ungainly. But it was undeniably powerful and brave in its account of industrialized animal slaughter in early 20th century, and the brutal exploitation of the immigrants who did most of the dirty work.

Is The Jungle still relevant? Well, the meat industry has gotten a number of states to pass “ag-gag” laws, which make it a crime to document what goes on in the slaughter houses that supply our grocery stores and restaurants. It makes you wonder what they don’t want anyone to see. I’d bet that they think, rightly, that a close up view of modern industrial slaughter operations would be very bad for business.

Of course, I very much doubt our modern slaughter houses are anywhere close to as filthy and disease-ridden as what Sinclair described, but, as Leah Garces explains in the recent podcast, they are still full of misery. Garces’s organization is working to help animal farmers transition to growing other products. She thinks (and I agree) that if we don’t like the system, criticizing it is not enough: it’s important to find and support better alternatives.

November 22, 2022

Polar creatures and some of their problems

When I got home from Antarctica, I felt like I’d aged about 30 years. I was very tired and weak for more than a week. But I’m happy to say, I’m feeling back to normal, and maybe even better. In fact, I’m starting to think about another trip there to see these beautiful creatures and their unique habitat. Anyhow, I wanted to share a few more pictures I made of penguins, an elephant seal, fur seals, and a leopard seal. I was trying to capture aspects of their personalities, customs, and environments.

As you may know, but many people don’t, Antarctica is in big trouble from climate change. Higher temperatures there are changing the habitats of the animals that live on and around the continent, and the collapse of giant ice shelves and melting glaciers are lifting sea levels. The situation is dire, and has global implications.

But I’ve really been trying to stay positive, and given so many sources of fear and anxiety, would like to avoid making your and my fear and anxiety still worse. Getting depressed is not going to help. But it’s tough to keep learning more about what is happening to our planet and not be tempted to throw in the towel.

And so I almost skipped a couple of podcasts on climate change last week that I’m glad I didn’t. I recommend both as antidotes for hopelessness put out by respected and trustworthy journalists.

David Wallace-Wells wrote what may well be the most detailed and gory account of what’s in store if we don’t change course in burning fossil fuels, The Uninhabitable Earth, in 2017, But in an interview on Fresh Air last week, he explained that technology and market forces have made the worst-case scenarios he described back then much less likely. We still stand a chance of putting in place the green energy infrastructures that would greatly mitigate disaster. He made these same points in a recent NY Times magazine piece.

Likewise, Bill McKibben has been a path-breaking writer on climate change, authoring among other things The End of Nature. (Long ago, I worked with McKibben when he was a young reporter and I was a fact checker at the New Yorker.) In an interview with Ezra Klein, McKibben said the long history of humans surviving by burning things will, one way or another, come to a conclusion, and it may be not be as terrible as we were recently expecting.

McKibben explained that the lower cost of solar panels and storage technologies is changing the energy equation, as the persistence of climate activists has finally gotten through to more people. The cost of renewables has fallen hugely, and is now lower than fossil fuels. Now it doesn’t make economic sense not to switch to green technology. L

Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies aren’t admitting this and they’re not giving up, so there’s still a lot of work to be done. McKibben continues to encourage activism, including in a new initiative called Third Act especially for those over 60. He thinks we should continue to press for fossil fuel divestment by their biggest bankers, which unfortunately, are all banks I do or have done business with: Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. He also articulated these points in a New Yorker piece

Before my Antarctic journey, I started rereading Bleak House, the epic novel by Charles Dickens. The hard back edition I had was a brick, at more than a thousand pages. To save weight while traveling, I tried switching to a free e-book version. This edition was full of bizarre errors, which I assume arose from relying on non-human editorial bots.

Anyhow, I resumed making my way through my paper copy when I got home. This year I’ve discovered, or rediscovered, that rereading can be extremely rewarding. In many cases, I took on heavy duty literature when I was young that I was ill-equipped to understand. The ordinary experiences of growing up — learning things, making a living, having friends and family, and everything else were transformative for me (as they are for everyone). I’m now 67 (almost the age when my father died), and a different person in many ways than I was at 15, or 25, or 35. Or 55, for that matter.

Certainly I’m much better equipped for the adventure of reading a masterpiece like Bleak House. On this, my fourth reading, I got much more from it, even as I better understood some of its shortcomings. I easily grasped Dickens’s great love for humanity, his humor, and his anger at injustice.

Now, after having had a career in the American legal system and experience with the British, French, Indian, Argentinian, and other legal systems, I can better appreciate Dickens’s bitter critique of the English courts of equity of his time. I now know a lot more about the history of colonialism and imperialism, and have a better frame of reference for the military and commercial struggles that happen offstage in his story.

Dickens was knowledgeable and critical of the ravages of early capitalism and industrialization, including extreme inequalities of wealth. He had a wonderful flair for sniffing out and satirizing hypocrisy and moral posing, including poorly thought out philanthropy.

Yet he was oblivious to problems with various other hierarchies, like race, gender, and species. The book has some of his most gorgeous writing, and also passages that feel like they were recycled on a tight deadline. Some of his characters are memorable and touching (I still adore Esther Summerson) or comic (Old Turveydrop), though others, like John Jarndyce, are more generous than any known human.

Apropos of climate change, Bleak House is also about what industrialization means for the environment, such as horrific and deadly pollution. His description of London fog and iron factory emissions are fascinating and disturbing. He also can be brutally honest in describing the struggles of enslaved animals, such as horses who fall while trying to pull a coach through the snow and mud.

Apropos of non-human animals and efforts to better understand their lives, I wanted to pass along a link to a thought-provoking story about pigs, which humans generally greatly underestimate and devalue as a species. Research reported by Leo Sands in the Washington Post indicated that pigs’ social lives have surprising dimensions. For example, when two pigs have a serious fight, a third pig will sometimes help resolve the dispute by nuzzling or similar touching. That is, some pigs are concerned about the unhappiness of other pigs, and know how to calm anger and increase happiness. Of course, humans also sometimes try to defuse tensions and resolve disputes, though we could do a lot better. Perhaps the pigs’ nuzzling approach would help.

November 13, 2022

My Antarctic Adventure

Last weekend I got back from an epic trip down to the southern tip of South America and from there to the Falklands, South Georgia, and the Antarctic Peninsula. I’m still sorting through the pictures I took, but here are some of them.

The expedition was led by Muench Workshops, with a view to wildlife and landscape photography. Our ship was the Ushuaia, a 278-foot-long vessel built in 1970 either as a research vessel or a spy ship, depending on which story you believed. I understood it was outfitted for the challenges of rough icy seas, and it did in fact get us down and back.

We were at sea for 21 days, and it was a rough ride a times. Winds were more than 50 knots, and waves more than 15 meters. Dishes slid off the dinner table a couple of times, and books came out of the book cases. Our expedition leader said the winds were the highest she’d seen in 26 years.

Walking from one place to another on ship was challenging. From early on I used a medication called Scopolamine to counteract seasickness, which did a good job, though it made my mouth dry. There was a Covid outbreak soon after the start of our voyage, and several people had to quarantine for a few days in their cabins. Happily, I was not infected, but we had to wear masks on board after that, which didn’t help socializing.

My primary objective for the trip was to have some time with the unique animals, and especially various species of penguins. They had convened in South Georgia by the thousands, along with elephant seals, fur seals, leopard seals, albatrosses, and other amazing creatures. We went ashore at several points using inflatable vessels called Zodiacs.

I’d known very little about South Georgia before the trip, except that polar explorer Ernest Shackleton had reached it as part of his epic survival story of 1914-17. Among other stops there, we visited Grytviken, a former whaling station where Shackleton was buried.

We had a toast at his grave, and afterwards, as I made my way along the beach to one of the Zodiacs, I got charged by a massive bull elephant seal. I quickly retreated by some yards, and he, dignity satisfied, left off.

As much as I was delighted by the penguins, I was disturbed by the whaling industry remnants. The equipment, red with rust, used for processing whale oil and other whale products was on a much bigger scale than I imagined.

Grytviken had a small museum that valorized the courage and endurance of the whale workers, which, of course, was real. But there didn’t seem to be any recognition or apology there for the whale holocaust in the 19th and 20th centuries, when millions of our fellow mammals were hunted to the verge of extinction.

I read several good books on the trip, including Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, an it-could-happen-here depiction of resistance in a misogynist theocracy.

I also liked Melanie Challenger’s recent How to Be Animal. Challenger’s book takes on the big question of how humans fit into the world. She focuses on the strange reality that modern humans still generally decline to recognize that they themselves are animals – a delusion which can blind them to the rich connectedness of life. She proposes that all animals be treated as inherently worthy of respect.

I also finished An Immense World, a new book by Ed Yong. It’s about the different ways that different animals perceive the world, and how their senses are integral to what Yong terms their umwelt, or their way of experiencing the world.

Yong goes through some exceptional non-human versions of the senses we know (like smelling, seeing, and hearing) and some that are foreign to us (like echolocation and magnetic and electrical sensing). The book was a good reminder that the human senses, marvelous as they are, are far from the most powerful, and that the non-human animal world is dense with fascinating other ways of being.

September 25, 2022

A beautiful garden, cultivating the microbiome, migrating godwits, and discovering Turgenev

Last weekend I visited for the first time a beautiful garden in south Raleigh – the Juniper Level Botanic Garden. It is a 28-acre site with thousands of plant species, which is open to the public only eight weekends a year. There are many greenhouses with plants for sale, but I focused on the garden areas. With our times so full of stress and anxiety, the place was wonderfully calming. I took a few pictures that I liked, which are here.

Speaking of important non-human life forms, as you may know but a lot of people don’t, gut health is a big deal. Your gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi living their own lives and helping you by processing what you eat.

When I first learned that there were so many foreigners living in my body, I felt a bit queasy. But I got over that, and gradually came to realize that I couldn’t get along without them. Their activities affect many aspects of health, including ordinary digestion, susceptibility to chronic diseases, weight, and mood.

Last week there was a good piece in the Washington Post summarizing current gut microbiome research. A major recommendation in it was new to me: good gut health involves eating many different fiber-rich plant foods. More variety is better, and a leading researcher recommends trying to eat 30 different plant foods a week.

Even if you already eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, Spector advises increasing the variety of plant foods you eat each week. One fast way to do this is to start using more herbs and spices. You can use a variety of leafy greens rather than one type of lettuce for your salads. Adding a variety of fruits to your breakfast, adding several different vegetables to your stir fry and eating more nuts, seeds, beans and grains is good for your microbiome.

Thirty different plants per week sounds like a lot, but the Post article had various tips on how to do it. I’ll add to those my own recipe for green smoothies, which I eat most every day: oat milk, flaxseed oil, kale (and/or spinach or another green), vegetables on hand (like carrots, celery, tomatoes), fruits on hand (like banana, apple, blueberries) and a little ice, blended on high. Delicious! And good for those essential gut workers!

Bird migrations are all remarkable, but none more so than that of the bar-tailed godwits, as I learned this week from a NY Times science story. Thousands of these birds are currently making a journey of more than 7,000 miles nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand and Australia. The amazing dimensions of this flight have just recently come to light using new banding and tracking technology.

The godwit’s epic flight — the longest nonstop migration of a land bird in the world — lasts from eight to 10 days and nights through pounding rain, high winds and other perils. It is so extreme, and so far beyond what researchers knew about long-distance bird migration, that it has required new investigations.

The physiology of these godwits is highly specialized, and still not well understood. Their life cycle reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Last of the Curlews, by Fred Bodsworth, about a similar epic migration, related from the viewpoint of a remarkable bird that’s now extinct. It cheered me to hear that the godwits are for now just fine, and that there are people who respect and marvel at them.

Speaking of birds, I read Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches recently, and thought it was a masterpiece. Published in 1852 in Russian, it’s a series of short stories involving an aristocratic narrator whose favorite pastime is hunting birds for sport.

Though I object strongly to hunting, I found the nature writing quite beautiful. At first glance, the stories appear to be primarily character studies of rural folk, but they gradually coalesce into a dimensional portrait of an entire society in crisis.

This week I read more about Turgenev in a piece by Keith Gessen in The New Yorker. Gessen’s main subject is the novel Fathers and Sons, but he gives a helpful biographical sketch of Turgenev and his milieu. Though seemingly casual and breezy, Sportsman’s Sketches conveyed the barbarity of serfdom, and apparently influenced the future Czar Alexander II to abolish the institution.

This was a cheering reminder that art and ideas can be forces for positive social change. Although we’re living in a dark time, which definitely could get darker, we shouldn’t give up yet.