People think of Fremont as a cookie cutter suburb

People think of Fremont as a cookie cutter suburb
Originally uploaded by marymactavish.

People think of Fremont as a cookie cutter suburb

Sense of wonder

Red maple, falling trees
Originally uploaded by marymactavish.

There is a book by Rachel Carson called A Sense of Wonder*, which I received as a gift from a woman I taught with and for, many years ago, my first Christmas with her.

The edition she gave me was published by the lovely and now defunct Nature Company, and had lovely color photos, and came in a box.

I'd read the book over and over, pulled deeply into Carson's descriptions of the time she spent with her young grand-nephew, whom she partially raised, their hours out spent looking for the tiny "Christmas Trees" they imagined the animals used, the seedlings that were the squirrels' trees, the saplings of the young deer; how she took him out night to see the stars on the rocky beaches of Maine, or look for nocturnal tidepool animals, frustrating well-meaning friends who didn't think she should have the child out past a reasonable bedtime.

In 1997, my apartment flooded during one of Sacramento's heavy winter rainstorms. The old storm drains with their narrow terra cotta pipes couldn't handle the rate of rainfall, and a few inches of rain came into my apartment, enough to soak the bottom shelves of the bookcases, to wick up the walls, and because, one particular storm, I was out of town at the time, to allow black mold to grow up the walls, as well. One of the victims was my copy of A Sense of Wonder.

Since then, I've found a copy at the Friends of the Castro Valley Library bookstore. I gasped in delight to find it, and though I had no money with me, the volunteers let me take it home anyway. I surprised them by coming back a few days later with the two dollars they were asking (and a donation of several boxes of good books for them to sell, as we were moving), grateful for their gift.

But this one is ... lacking. Not only are the photos in black and white, they weren't necessarily meant to be, so they aren't nearly as evocative as black and white can be, it is merely an expediency of printing in an earlier age. And again because the book is an earlier publishing, it's a bit faded .... it doesn't work as well. I sit and try to read the words, and I can read them, they're wonderful, but I want the lovely pictures too.

So I'm pondering typing the whole thing out, just for me, and either illuminating it with tiny watercolor details, or using my own photos to make a pdf, and print and bind a copy, just for me, for my own reading, my own coffee table. (I'd illuminate it Sark-style, except that my arthritis thinks it's a bad idea for me to write with a pen for very long at a time.)

Where is this going? I think I'm aiming this way, too:
1) This sort of thing, the sense of wonder that Rachel Carson felt so deeply, and shared with her nephew and the world, is perhaps the biggest chunk of why I love geography. Learning about the earth helps me to become emotionally intimate with it, and vice versa, and that matters to me.
2) I need to stop thinking about the "right" ways to use this blog, geographically, and share more about my own experience of geography.

A Sense of Wonder wasn't finished by the time Rachel Carson, who remains in my pantheon of saints, passed away. It was lovingly assembled from her notes. I am so grateful to the people who thought it was valuable enough for that.





*And googling that: How did I not know about the film? Why did no one tell me?

Toward Ukiah Valley

Toward Ukiah Valley
Originally uploaded by pkingDesign.

This illustrates California, for me -- like plein aire paintings. I know that some people think of it as beaches, or Hollywood, or redwoods, but green or golden hills, oak savanna or woodland, rolling into the distance, that's California.

In other news, I'm revisiting how to use this blog, and I think I'm going to try for a themed day (even if I have to frontload) about sense of place, one about conservation, and then fill in the rest sort of randomly. I'm still happy to entertain guest blogging, but I want pieces to fit my sense of geographilia.

I'm way busy now with the new kid, and we're moving to a new house (which will decrease my workload, the yard's much easier to deal with) so I'm debating whether to really put hard energy into this with the hope of "monetizing" it a bit -- google adwords? switch to wordpress and add ads? I have no idea, and it might not even be worthwhile -- or just to accept that I'm busier and scattered these days, and do it catch as catch can. I would appreciate feedback, ideas, opinions, or other discussion about that (or about California and what illustrates "California" to you).

the truest sense of awesome

Today's tornado crosses the Connecticut River in Springfield, Massachusetts.



The tornado caused moderate damage and no deaths, nothing like the spate that's plagued the midwest, but still, nothing to scoff at.

The clearest version of this video - long, no titles - I've encountered is in Facebook, but that's not embeddable here. If you'd like to look, check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2063834605138

correction: four deaths

look at what liquefaction can do

Isn't that amazing? Look at the water gooshing up, and the swaying dirt. Holy cow. I'd rather be in open space, even liquefying open space, in a big quake, than in the middle of a city, or *sigh* within the first few blocks of a Japanese coastal town, but still, that just makes the bottoms of my feet crawl to watch.

In the San Francisco bay area, we keep talking about building on marshes. Look at that ground! You are going to have a hard time convincing me to live on that.

I have a big Japanquake post in notepad on my desktop, just waiting for some more anchor tags and rounding out with citations, and I will finish it today. This doesn't really fit in there, though, so I'm sticking it here now. The baby is due this weekend (but might come a little late) so I'm a tad bit distracted.

look at the dot

Baby's due in a week.

This is all I can think of to write, right now:



Also: I typed "look at the dog" for this title at first, and when I was opening this page, "geographile.dogspot.com". Yes, I have dogs, but this is out of hand. I can't imagine I'll survive long as a parent with brain intact.

(Blame Kimberly for the animation, she's the one who imposed it on me.)

they became casualties of their own privilege

Clearcut
Originally uploaded by thekirbster.

This is happening in so many ways, right now, as it's happened throughout history. But with seven billion people, healing is harder than it once was.

You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from reading history. Ultimately gross inequality can be fatal to civilization. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Jared Diamond writes about how governing elites throughout history isolate and delude themselves until it is too late. He reminds us that the change people inflict on their environment is one of the main factors in the decline of earlier societies. For example: the Mayan natives on the Yucatan peninsula who suffered as their forest disappeared, their soil eroded, and their water supply deteriorated. Chronic warfare further exhausted dwindling resources. Although Mayan kings could see their forests vanishing and their hills eroding, they were able to insulate themselves from the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well-fed while everyone else was slowly starving. Realizing too late that they could not reverse their deteriorating environment, they became casualties of their own privilege. Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure, Diamond warns, if elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their decisions, separated from the common life of the country.

- Bill Moyers

Nacreous Clouds

First guest post!
Or, perhaps, a reblog, but I asked her if I could link it as a guest post.

(bigger image for gorgeous colors)

Last year, I posted a few pictures of this dazzling phenomenon I observed in the sky.

A year later, thanks to the Collins Weather Wild Guide, I have learned that what I saw were nacreous clouds, a form of iridescence.

Something I already knew: Nacreous clouds are rare, and I was very lucky to observe them.

Winter Storm kicks midwest ass and moves on

And Dan, at Wild Wild Weather, discusses this relative to the massive Typhoon currently traveling over the top of Queensland after ripping off a few roofs along the way.

Much of Queensland's doom this summer (as it's still summer there) has been related to La Nina/ENSO, but how much worse is it because of climate change? We can't know exactly with regard to any storm or even series of storms, but globally, the weather is extreme this year, and that matches climate change predictions very well. Dan's got more information on that throughout his blog, one of my favorites in the field.

Breaking stereotypes but just a little

http://xkcd.com/

Note that when you go to the original page, and do the traditional xkcd mouseover for minor punchline in the alt text, you get the tidbit that Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries. Before I look it up, I have to figure out what the other one is.

Now I want to get a blank map, with only coast lines, not borders, and fill it in like this. I can put about 2/3 of Africa and nearly all of South America. Eastern Europe and what my husband calls "Soviet Blockistan," or the parts of Asia and Europe that were formerly Soviet Union countries, are a lot harder.

The frontier is everywhere.

I want to come back in some-odd thousands of years and look back, just to see where we've come, and find out what this chunk of time means in the grand scheme of things.

I'm dreaming of a white Boxing Day

First: Go check out Dan's explanation of the meteorology that drove the blizzard. I'll wait. (My post is pure fluff.)

Okay, back? Here we go:

The timelapse video of the world filling with snow is fabulous. Poor little clcok!

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Yesterday's blizzard on the northeast coast of the United States hit hard, snarling the subways and traffic, and giving people either a night stuck on a train or in a station or airport, or else a day indoors staying warm..

A satellite camera took a great shot as it moved on, leaving people to shovel out and make snow angels.


(photo: NASA Goddard)

What was your Boxing Day Blizzard 2010 like? (I'm in the San Francisco bay area. Here, it was just cool and wet.)

rompin' in a winter wonderland!

Oooh, this video now contains geographilic information, so I can post it! Yay!

Bailey's human says:

I shot this video on VHS-C in my backyard, near Ward, Colorado (8,700' elevation) during a blizzard in the late 1990's; a local weatherman said it was the most measureable snow (if memory serves, it was 54" in 48 hours) from the least amount of moisture ever.

On the Earth Day of Christmas ....

For a proper Christmas celebration this year, check out last year's Twelve Days of Earth Science from
Highly Allochthonous. It's beautifully silly and fun, and I wish I'd thought of it - and might just copy the idea. :D

Basking Shark, Red Sea

Now I feel like I really must go kayaking in the Red Sea.

time-lapse solstice eclipse

My writing fu just seems stuck lately, what with planning for impending baby, some health issues, and .... well, I have no other excuses. But here's neat time-lapse video of last night's eclipse!

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

I have a bookmark file full of things to write about, and rather than go on hiatus, I think I'll toss them up as I'm able. I apologize.

- Mary

Google Earth skydiving

I wonder if my acrophobia would kick in.

NYC historical photos - but from whom?

Aerial view of midtown Manhattan looking west from the East River
July 1944



I hope the original credits/copyright appear in the comments soon, here and/or in response to the flickr photo you can get to if you click through.

Here's another unattributed photo that I haven't found a source for. Would love to know, as I'm sure not all of these are in the public domain or creative commons. So many good photos like that are out there in the wild.



One of my favorite things about Flickr is that I can explore the creative commons photos there, and both use them and give credit where it is due.

our brightly colored slimy neighbors of the deepish

From the National Science Foundation

Sea slug species Elysia chlorotica feeding on Vaucheria litorea, a yellow-green algae. E. chlorotica sequesters chloroplasts from the algae into specialized cells lining the digestive diverticulum, and the chloroplasts are photosynthetically functional for 9 to 11 months. Nuclear-encoded, algal chloroplast genes necessary to the function of the sequestered chloroplasts have been horizontally transferred and integrated into the slug genome. (Date of Image: 2009)

Nudibranchs are SO COOL.

They poop poison if they don't ingest it as defense. They dress up as poisonous critters.

And many people don't even know they exist.
















Click through for image credit,
all are some form of creative commons licensed or otherwise allowed appropriate to this venue.

Winter in Star City

StarCity view (at -25 C)
Originally uploaded by europeanspaceagency.

Star City, Kazakhstan
November 2010
Temperature -25C