review and study sessions

A general review session will be held Wednesday May 10, 2006 at 10:00 am in Fernow 304.

A study session will be held Monday May 15 from 5:00-8:00 pm in Fernow 304.

A study session will be held Tuesday May 16 at 2:00 pm in Fernow 212.

THERAPEUTIC TREE WALK - Tuesday May 9th

Tired of studying for NTRES220 already?!?!

...Meet at 1:00PM at the Triphammer Bridge on Tuesday for a fun and educational "tour" of scenic Beebe Lake!

Join fellow Natural Resource students in this relaxing event...
sponsored by the Cornell Forestry Club.

We plan to picnic (free food) and then parade around Beebe Lake and the surrounding area. Highly knowledgeable NATRESers will be leading the walk and teaching tree identification. Free tree ID books will be available, and locally produced maple sugar candy will be on sale.

*This is great practice for NTRES210: FIELDBIO or a refresher if you've already taken this required course.

Take a break from studying on May 9th and join us to enjoy the spring foliage!

Any questions can be directed to Shavonne at ses65@cornell.edu.

Nature in Los Angeles

The following email appeared on the environmental history listserv on H-NET. The article by Jenny Price is pretty good and apparently is an excerpt from her 2005 environmental history of Los Angeles.

To: H-ENVIRONMENT@H-NET.MSU.EDU

From: Ben Johnson
Date: 25 April 2006
Subject: Price piece on cities and Nature

Fellow H-Enviros:

Wanted to call everybody's attention to a compelling (and entertaining) piece by Jennifer Price, author of Flight Maps, in the new issue of the Believer, complete with handsome photographs by Stephen Smith. Price's questioning of what we mean by nature, and her trenchant critique of nature writing, will be of interest to all environmental historians, even those who don't share her knowledge or fascination with Los Angeles, whose history and culture serve as the point of departure for her wider arguments.

Coming off of the annual meeting, this is a particularly timely piece. Environmental historians, it seems to me, do an excellent job of interdisciplinary work with field scientists and public lands managers. But we largely neglect cultural history (as confirmed by a quick look at the program for the St. Paul meeting), and in so doing, I think sharply limit our ability to convince the rest of the profession of the centrality of environmental questions. This piece suggests how we might effectively bring cultural questions to the heart of our work.

Here's the link:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200604/?read=article_price

jt

Carl Leopold talk on Tuesday May 2

here's an announcement forwarded from Prof. Fahey's Environmental Conservation class:

NTRES grad student and TA for Environmental Conservation, Florian Eichiner, organized this talk for students in NTRES 201, but the talk will be open to anyone that might be interested in the topic and hearing Carl...

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
Department of Natural Resources, 304 Fernow Hall, 7:00pm

Speaker: Carl A. Leopold

The ethical relationship with the land that supports us: a discussion of Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic

A great chance to hear Aldo Leopold's son Carl talking about his father's Land Ethic, why that has become a prominent factor in agriculture and forestry, and nevertheless how rapidly unethical exploitation of our resources continues to expand.

Week 11 addition to the syllabus

Just a reminder that there is an additional assigned reading for Week Eleven:

** Worster, Donald. “Clements and the Climax Community,” chapter 11 in Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 2nd. Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 205-220 plus notes (electronic reserve).

In addition, we strongly suggest also taking a look at:

+ Tobey, Ronald C. , “Frederic Clements’s Theory of Plant Succession,” chapter 4 in Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895-1955 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 76-109 plus notes (electronic reserve).

Both of these readings are on electronic reserve. thanks everyone.
Jim

"The Ledge" now off-Broadway

Hi everyone,
I had mentioned in class that "The Ledge" has just been turned into a play that is currently in production in New York. Here are the details--if anyone is planning a trip to NYC next weekend, could be an interesting thing to check out:

THE LEDGE
A New Play Based on the Short Story by Lawrence Sargent Hall

Written by Jack Hanley
Directed by Christopher Eaves
Starring Mike Houston

Friday March 24
Saturday March 25
Friday April 7
Saturday April 8

8:00 PM (Doors Open at 7:30)

Dixon Place
258 Bowery, 2nd Floor (South of E Houston)
New York City

TICKETS: 212 219 0736

For more information visit http://www.eavesdrop.net or http://dixonplace.org

Bambi ad

While surfing the web the other day, I came across this ad. It's yet another example of how Bambi has impacted our society. Advertisers use the sentimentality that people feel toward Bambi to help their campaigns. The problem of forest fires is one environmental issue brought up by the film. Whether the fire in Bambi was set intentially to scare game or whether it was simply a campfire that got out of control, people see the importance of teaching forest fire safety and environmental protection, and Bambi is a means that everyone understands.

pre-exam humor...

The Ralph Lutts article included a comment about a short video entitled "Bambi Meets Godzilla". The sequel to this short is available at www.ifilms.com if you search "Son of Bambi Meets Godzilla" and is worth the ten seconds it takes to watch it.

-Emily Benning

review sessions

Hi everyone,
just a reminder that there will be two review sessions for the mid-term. Jocelyn will run a session on Sunday afternoon March 12 in Fernow 304 at 4:00 pm. Then on Monday March 13 we will hold a review in Fernow 304 at 2:00 pm.

thanks everyone.

Hudson River School painters in the news

Hi everyone,
it's been a quiet week on the blog, but showing Asher Durand's painting, Progress, this morning made me think of another of his famous paintings--Kindred Spirits (1849), shown here.

This painting made the news last year when the New York Public Library decided to sell it off, and the buyer turned out to be Alice Walton, heir to the Wal-Mart fortune.

The rumored but uncomfirmed purchase price is estimated to be somewhere in the ballpark of $35 million, the largest amount ever paid for a work of art by an American artist!

This sparked a lot of commentary from critics who argued that the Library should have held on to the painting; or, if they had to sell Kindred Spirits, that at the least it shouldn't have gone to Wal-Mart.

Here are a couple of links to articles discussing the sale and whether it was appropriate. Another "UTPT"--Ultimate Term Paper Topic!

2005 Article "Kindred Spirits: Art and Money" from the Gotham Gazette, an NYC arts commentary publication.

Rebecca Skolnit Feb. 19, 2006 OpEd piece: "Not-so 'Kindred Spirits'" in the LATimes. You need to register with (for free) with LATimes to read the article. It's worth it.

Careful, it's rough out there, Bambi

Two deer locked antlers in a fight in Indiana and then drowned when they fell through the ice of a farm pond. For details and photo, read the full article.

The tension between Liberalism "Big L" and environmentalism

In the "never too early department," one nice book that covers the topic discussed this morning in class is Matthew Cahn's book, Environmental Deceptions: The Tensions Between Liberalism and Environmental Policy-Making in the United States. Here is the blurb from amazon.com:

Book Description
This book explores the tensions between American political culture, which is predicated on self-interest, and environmental regulation, which restricts individual property rights.

Environmental Deceptions brings together normative analysis and empirical data to explain the structural limitations liberal society places on environmental improvement. Whereas liberal society is predicated on individual self-interest, environmental legislation is predicated on communal regulation of individual property rights. Cahn's aim is to expose the tensions between American political culture and environmental regulation in an effort to make environmental policy discourse more effective. By analyzing such areas as air policy, water policy, waste policy, and energy policy, he exposes the subtle tensions that often lead to failure and explains why traditional models of environmental legislation are insufficient to resolve existing environmental dilemmas.

Jim again: Hopefully this will also help students in the "So What?" department, given the importance of understanding Liberalism for understanding contemporary environmental policy.

Beauty and the Beast: more than a fairy tale?

Lots of good stuff out there about Beauty and the Beast. One site gives a good historical overview of the origins and development of the tale; here's a brief excerpt:

The story of Beauty and the Beast has been around for centuries in both written and oral form, and more recently in film and video. Many experts trace similarities back to the stories of Cupid and Psyche, Oedipus and Apuleius’ The Golden Ass of the second century A.D.

The tale of Beauty and the Beast was first collected in Gianfranceso Straparola’s Le piacevolo notti (The Nights of Straparola) 1550-53. The earliest French version is an ancient Basque tale where the father was a king and the beast a serpent. Charles Perrault popularized the fairy tale with his collection Contes de ma mere l’oye (Tales of Mother Goose) in 1697. The 17th century Pentamerone is also said to include similar tales.

The first truly similar tale to the one we know today was published in 1740 by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Gallon de Villeneuve as part of a collection of stories La jeune amériquaine, et les contes marins (told by an old woman during a long sea voyage). Mme. de Villeneuve wrote fairy tale romances drawn from earlier literature and folk tales for the entertainment of her salon friends.

Almost half of the Villeneuve story revolves around warring fairies and the lengthy history of the parentage of both Beauty and the Prince. Beauty is one of 12 children, her stepfather is a merchant, her real father being the King of the Happy Isles. The Queen of the Happy Isles is both Beauty’s mother and the Dream Fairy Sister. Villeneuve also made various digs at the many enforced marriages that women had to submit to, and her Beauty ponders that many women are made to marry men far more beastly than her Beast. The story was 362 pages long.

French aristocrat Madame Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (1711 - 1780) emigrated to England in 1745 where she established herself as a tutor and writer of books on education and morals. She took Mme. de Villeneuve’s tale and shortened it, publishing it in 1756 as part of a collection entitled Magasin des enfants. Although taking all the key elements from the Mme. de Villeneuve story, Mme. de Beaumont omits some dream sequences and the fact that in the original the transformation to handsome prince takes place after the wedding night. Intended as a lesson for her students, some of the subversive edges were polished off the story. It is pretty well the version we consider traditional today. Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont’s story was translated into English as The Young Misses Magazine, Containing Dialogues between a Governess and Several Young Ladies of Quality, Her Scholars (1757).

The literature on the subsequent film versions of the tale is vast: there are internet sites that discuss the Cocteau film as well as the Disney version.

Gawain's World! Gawain's World!

Again, as you might imagine, there are many, many resources out there on the Gawain story. Here's just one web site that has numerous links, essays, etc. devoted to the tale. Here's the site's introduction from Mary-Jo Arn:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Written in the late fourteenth century, Sir Gawain is made up of two stories, one (the testing at Bercilak's castle) set inside the other (the beheading of the Green Knight at the beginning and the return blow at the end). That is not to say it is a cut-and-paste job; it is thought by many to be the finest literary work of the Middle Ages. It is also the rarest of tales: a love story that isn't, really, as well as one of the funniest tales of the Middle Ages, rivalling anything written by the anonymous poet's more famous contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer. (The author also wrote a fine religious poem in the form of a dream vision, which we call Pearl.)

In the first episode at King Arthur's castle, you must bear in mind that no one knows what is going on. Like Grendel, the Green Knight is a sort of creature never seen before by men. Sir Gawain is, throughout the poem, marked by absolute courtliness, that is to say, the is always courageous, honorable (he keeps his word), devout, loyal, and gracious toward all men and (especially) women (pay special attention to the pentangle). He thinks it is his courage that is being tested (wouldn't you?). He does not realize that the incidents in his bedroom at Bercilak's castle, which parallel the hunting scenes (can you guess why?) are actually another kind of test. Thus, when he arrives to face his test at the end, he discovers that he has already been tested--that his test is, in fact, over. Wouldn't you be angry at being tricked this way?

The Green Knight is probably not to be seen as evil. He is a shape-shifter, and Bercilak seems to say that the Bercilak-persona is the "real" one. However, don't give too much credence to his "explanation" of his motivations at the end of the poem (the Morgan le Faye stuff), which is pretty preposterous and doesn't really explain anything.

Ask yourself when you finish the poem: What is really being tested? (This is not a simple question.) How does Sir Gawain do? What are we supposed to think of the Green Knight? Bercilak's wife? King Arthur? his court? Sir Gawain himself?

Jim again: a full text translation of the poem can be found online.

And if anyone can find a picture or a screen capture out there of Mike Myers doing "Gawain's World," well . . . you might not be guaranteed an "A," but you'll be earning some serious brownie points. :-)

Gladiators

Well, as you might imagine there is just a ton of stuff out there about gladiators, the Colosseum, animal fights, etc.

Here is an excerpt from one web site describing Caelius's problems in getting panthers. If I'm not mistaken, this is the same Caelius who despaired of getting any leopards from Cicero (overall he was probably having a really bad day getting animals):

Roman officials (aediles) in charge of giving spectacles relied on their contacts in the provinces to help them get animals. In the following letter, M. Caelius Rufus, a protégé of Cicero, who had been elected to the office of aedile, complains to his mentor that he has not sent him more more panthers from Cilicia (modern southwest Turkey), where Cicero was provincial governor (Patiscus was a Roman businessman working in Cilicia) (ad Fam. 8.9.3):

In almost all my letters I wrote to you about panthers. It will embarrass you that Patiscus has sent ten panthers to Curio and that you have not sent me many more than that. Curio gave me those ten panthers plus another ten African ones…if you will only remember and procure panthers from Cibyra and likewise send a letter to Pamphylia (they say that more panthers are captured there), you will accomplish your purpose…for as soon as they are captured, you have people available whom I sent to feed and ship them.

Cicero responds somewhat humorously (ad Fam. 2.11.2):

The matter of the panthers is being dealt with at my command by those who are accustomed to hunt them. The problem is that there is a remarkable shortage of the animals, and those panthers that remain complain vigorously that the only traps set in my province are for them. Therefore the rumor is that they have decided to leave my province for Caria. Nevertheless your request is being taken care of and Patiscus is giving it first priority. As many panthers as are available will be yours…

Jim again: oh that wacky Cicero! he's always cutting me up.

Great topic for further reading.

We live in the Golden Age of Technology!

The entire text of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas is online, and you have access to it!

This is great because, for example, the full text of the entry on "Primitivism" from the Dictionary is available at http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv3-72. The entry summarizes much of what I covered in yesterday's lecture and goes into far more detail than would be possible in a lecture. Isn't technology wonderful? Enjoy.

Jim

p.s. you might also enjoy (?!?) the subsequent entry, "Primitivism in the Eighteenth Century." It's never too early . . . .

If you can't get enough of Joseph Knowles . . .

Don't forget to check out the Joseph Knowles picture gallery on the course web page.

There you'll see the following such gems (and others) from Knowles's book, Alone in the Wilderness:


Click on the images to see larger versions.


And if you just can't get enough Joseph Knowles, check out the American Heritage article, "Yankee Tarzan," to get more of the story.

Gilgamesh and Noah's Ark

One version of the Epic of Gilgamesh contains an account of a flood that is remarkably similar to the story of Noah's Ark told in the Hebrew Bible. Shown is a photo of the "flood tablet" in the British Museum. Here's a description:

The Flood Tablet, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BC
From Nineveh, northern Iraq

The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia
click here to play video clip

The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC) collected a library of thousands of cuneiform tablets in his palace at Nineveh. They recorded myths, legends and scientific information. Among them was the story of the adventures of Gilgamesh, a legendary ruler of Uruk, and his search for immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a huge work, the longest literary work in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia and Assyria). It was widely known, with versions also found at Hattusas, capital of the Hittites, and Megiddo in the Levant.

This, the eleventh tablet of the epic, describes the meeting of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim. Like Noah in the Hebrew Bible, Utnapishtim had been forewarned of a plan by the gods to send a great flood. He built a boat and loaded it with everything he could find. Utnapishtim survived the flood for six days while mankind was destroyed, before landing on a mountain called Nimush. He released a dove and a swallow but they did not find dry land to rest on, and returned. Finally a raven that he released did not return, showing that the waters must have receded.

This Assyrian version of the Old Testament flood story was identified in 1872 by George Smith, an assistant in The British Museum. On reading the text he

... jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.'

Length: 15.24 cm
Width: 13.33 cm
Thickness: 3.17 cm

Excavated by A.H. Layard

Some scholars interpret such flood stories as commentaries on what the gods will do to humans when humans overstep their bounds--including environmental bounds, such as when human population levels get too high.

Do play the video clip (in Real Player format) which is very interesting.

Gilgamesh reproductions online

Here's just the thing for your dorm room--a scaled down reproduction of the fourteen foot high statue of Gilgamesh that stands in the Louvre. Only $111 !! Here are the details from Talaria Enterprises, a company that specializes in such things:

Gilgamesh Hero from Uruk
This self-standing relief illustrates Gilgamesh, a historical king of Uruk in Babylonia (modern Iraq), who lived around 2700 BC. His mythical exploits survive for us in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a 3,000-line epic poem, in which its hero undertakes a voyage to the netherworld, the land of No Return, in his attempt to understand his surroundings and find meaning in human existence. The original, now in the Louvre Museum, is almost 14 feet high and came from the throne room of the palace of Sargon, Dur Sharroukin c. 700 BC. Reproduction is made from resin, hand finished green and brown, 16”H x 8.75”W x 3”L, 13 lbs.4342, $111
Available LATE DECEMBER 2005

Sure to impress your friends and family when they come to visit . . . .

Human carrying capacity . . .

The following link is to a brief article that discusses Cohen's book and some of the problems with the concept of "carrying capacity" as applied to human population. Here's a brief excerpt:

One of the central debates in population literature centers on what the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth is and whether we’re below or above that level (or are likely to be in the future). Doomsayers like Paul Ehrlich and Garrett Hardin seem to think the Earth has already exceeded its carrying capacity while their critics such as Julian Simon seem to believe the carrying capacity of the planet is infinite. But as demographer Joel Cohen points out in How Many People Can the Earth Support?, the real problem is with the concept of carrying capacity itself -- "on examination, none of the existing concepts of carrying capacity in basic or applied ecology turns out to be adequate for the human population" (Cohen 1995, p.237).

fyi. Use the blog to pass along items of interest, commentary, discussion, disagreement and argument (keep it polite of course!), but have fun with it. Pictures too.

Anyway, have a great weekend everyone.
Jim

Blog invites have been sent . . .

Hi everybody,
the invitations from blogger.com have gone out via email, so if you're checking the blog out and haven't gotten one yet, or if you just added the class, please let me know by email. thanks everyone.

Jim

Welcome!

Welcome to Natural Resources 220, "People, Values, and Natural Resources."