When I was a boy growing up in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my schoolteacher mother would periodically and without warning announce to me and my brother that she was taking us on a “nature hike.” This typically meant that we would be conscripted into a platoon of wildlife observers and botanists prepared to witness the wonders...
Rain that slickens the sturdy palm, fruits that aren’t yet ripe, Harpy eagles intent on digging talons and razor beak into simian livers — these are the concerns of a brown capucin, dancing in the canopy, high above the mud of Pachamama, who bequeathed the trees and everything else to those who dare to climb ...
Being a dog owner, I understand completely the impulse to anthropomorphize our pets, imbuing them with human traits that canines and felines — and goldfish and hamsters and salamanders — don’t really have. Our furry (or scaly) friends seem so much more than mere animals. They’re companions and confessors, students and teachers, and they magically...
Evidence of an unwanted visitor: hunks of green flesh missing; pockmarks and scrapes, like the residuals from a Bad case of acne; Ants crawling inside the formerly impenetrable husk. The tomato has been breached, Probably by a rat Or maybe a bird, an enterprising finch, who pecked and poked and discovered that the emerald fruit...
To the residents of far away precincts, in states where a vote for staunch defenders of the Holy Cross means one extra ticket to the carnival of Heaven, the shroud of velvet mist represents a shroud, like the one in Turin. Fog equals ennui. The sun-baked, though, see the cloud on the ground as a welcome...
Standing sentry beside the unblemished avenues of the upper-class fortresses which line Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and all the other places where winners live and those who Have not Discovered the magic formula May not reside, The lilacs and myrtles and jacarandi Burst forth Insistently. Proudly. Defiantly. Like hundreds of gravity-defying breasts, announcing to the...
To those who haven’t experienced the beast outside of its natural habitat of strip malls and gated communities, the Ugly American seems an outlandish caricature, a literary device employed to make a point about modern capitalism. Unlike Nessie or Sasquatch, however, this monster really exists. You can see him every summer in Europe, and at...
After more than a week in the deep wilderness, in the Amazonian basin, where Boliva meets Peru and there are more waterways than roads, three native people asked me where I am from, since it was clear to them from my visage and my language that I’m not indigenous. Not a soul asked, “What do...
The butterfly lives on average for three weeks. Although it enjoys many months as a larva and caterpillar, its winged existence is intensely beautiful and unimaginably brief. In the few days it has before it expires, the butterfly must find a mate and leave behind the next generation. Its brilliantly gaudy wings help attract a...
Of all the inapt similes in common usage, “eats like a bird” is perhaps the most backwards. (“Could care less” is just mistaken English, and “smokes like a chimney” is sometimes right on and sometimes not, depending on what one is actually trying to say.) Trying to be pointedly descriptive, many of us employ “eats...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Alien invasion! Earth occupied by creatures far smarter than humans! Thousands of years of civilization rendered irrelevant! Cory Finley’s movie adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s novel Landscape with Invisible Hand accomplishes the impressive feat of being simultaneously incisive/critical/instructive and entertaining/funny/touching. While the film is ultimately a scathing indictment of colonialism, capitalism, and artificial intelligence, the action...
