I.
See K8s and her friend's blogs. I've been tagged with the book meme, so here it goes:
1. Name one book that changed your life.
A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari.
2. Name one book you have read more than once.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
3. One book you would want on a desert island.
American Indian Myths & Legends, Erdoes & Ortiz.
4. Two books that made you laugh.
Even Gowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. One book that made you cry.
Truth & Bright Water, Thomas King
6. One book you wish you'd written.
Writing Without Teachers, Peter Elbow
7. One book you wish had never been written.
"The Song of Hiawatha" by H. W. Longfellow
8. Two books you are currently reading.
Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving our kids from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Allison Wallace's A Keeper of Bees
So, who to pass this on to? Maybe Scot and Sarah.
II.
Oh, and I have my very own webpage. Some links are still forthcoming.
III.
Plus, it has been a year now that we have lived without our dog, Page. We miss her still.
3 comments:
I really like your web page! The home page picture is pretty. :-) The courses link and the research link aren't working for me, though, but there could just be some stray code getting in the way.
And, I've reread numbers 2, 3, and 6. (See, compulsive re-reader) I'll have to check out the Thomas King book - I like what I've read of his writing.
Mike,
I appreciate what you say about the quality of contact with nature. While I wouldn't presume to post an entire review on anyone's post, I leave yours up in the spirit of open communication and limit myself to only a brief reply.
Like Louv's thesis, your own has problems. This exchange, occurring through a cybernetic medium is itself part of the problem as you define it. Our use of machines filled with lead, cadmium, and flame retardants is hardly indicative of a "good quality" interaction with nature. Make no mistake -- it *is* an interaction with nature even though we often forget the processes upon which our use of computers depends. In short, we forget the ecological insights that "everything is connected" and that "someone lives downstream" (see my post on sustainable post-humanity).
And while I think you are 100% right to focus on the quality of the interactions, I also think that the concept of a socially-exempt "wilderness" is simply untenable. William Cronon made such an observation in 1995 and this has been followed up by a host of research that calls attention to the fact that what we often value as "wilderness" has been inhabited and even shaped by pre-colonial populations. Besides, excluding people from a zone does not work the other way. The species in the exclusion zone will (not just maybe - definitely) move beyond its territories. Not only can't we ask them to please stay on their side of the nature-culture divide, but we can't even ask them if the spot we choose is a good one or not. Even if we do agree that spot "X" is to be lassiez-faire, we have enforcement and monitoring issues so we stay true to our word as well as keep an eye on the balances we have already so badly upset that they don't come back to haunt us (like CWD or some other pestilence - nature's way of dealing with overpopulation).
Put in the simplest way, I don't think biocentricity is possible. We can never really know what nature wants because nature cannot speak on her own behalf. This doesn't mean adopting anthropocentrism, nor does it mean we don't hear things from nature (Katrina certainly spoke loud enough). The problem, as I see it and as you even admit, is that we often get different or conflicting messages.
As Louv argues, it is organizations like Pheasants Forever or Duck Unlimited that have played crucial roles in protecting habitat.
Okay. I usually don't do the meme thing, but I'll do this one, although it's goin' get repetitive (my list, that is: DUNE, bks 1-4, for #1-3,6; #4: Yep, HHG ... and everything David Sedaris; #5: cry?; #7: George Lucas' Star Wars, bad, just bad; #8: Gee's Discourse Analysis and ... well, just one at a time).
And nice webpage! I like the colors. My only advice: go narrower or move the image. My monitor is 1280 wide, so I'm guessing your page is around 1024 pixels wide. While most screens are at least that these days, the image and info in the bottom right could get lost. If there's a way to get the image to move up and left, so it aligns top with the Welcome! and allows the paragraph text to wrap to its left and bottom, you can have them all within 800-900 pixels. If you're editing the template like I do the comp-rhet page, it would look similar to the program homepage pic/text. I don't know about the newer DW templates, though. I was using 2004's MX.
Have fun!
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