by  Steve Szilagyi

My favorite place on Earth is Niagara Falls. I refresh my spirit there. Standing on the very brink, my chest pummeled by the roar of millions of gallons of fresh water plunging into the abyss, I feel at one with figures like Margaret Fuller, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, each of whom recorded their humbled awe at the spectacle. I throw my mind into the past and imagine countless generations of Native Americans standing on the brink of the Falls and wondering, as many do today: where is all this water going?

Well, I’ll tell you where it goes: down the Niagara Gorge, into Lake Ontario, into the St. Lawrence Seaway, and finally to the Atlantic Ocean, where it mixes with the saltwater and is, for all practical purposes, wasted.

Now I’ll tell you where it isn’t going: it isn’t going to the showerhead in my luxury Niagara Falls hotel room. Even though I can look through my window and see 44,500 gallons of fresh water tumbling over the brink every minute, when I step into my marbled bathroom and turn on the shower, I stand under the same strangled trickle I’d get in a cheap motel outside Salinas, California, or another city with severe water use restrictions.

Primal pleasure denied. I don’t need to sell anyone on the satisfaction of a good, strong shower—hot, but not too hot, slightly stinging, and thoroughly cleansing of both body and soul. Yet this primal pleasure has not been widely available since 1992, when the U.S. Energy Policy Act mandated that new showerheads sold in the country not exceed 2.5 gallons per minute.

The Energy Policy Act makes sense for places like the American West, where the combination of climate change, cattle farming, and almond growing has created a dire water situation. But Niagara Falls? Read more »

by Paul Braterman

This book is a delight. Drawing on a deep love of her subject matter, the author interweaves descriptions of a sequence of rock types with the story of her own personal and professional life. An extremely difficult feat to bring off, but Marcia Bjornerud (M) manages to do this without artificiality or mawkishness, drawing on historical and philosophical insights whose origins are hinted at throughout the text, and explaining complex concepts in lucid and enjoyable language.  The only thing I did not like about the book is its appearance, which for me fails to suggest the hard-won insights that it is so successful in conveying.

M began her training in the early 1980s, at an interesting time, when the community of geologists was still absorbing the implications of plate tectonics, and geology was changing from a descriptive to an explanatory science. This was also when, despite the best efforts of the fossil fuel companies, predictions of global warming were beginning to seep into public awareness. A difficult situation for a socially aware geologist, since these same companies are going to be the main employers of her students.

She was established in what most people would regard as a successful academic career, having earned tenure at an unnamed but easily identified major Midwestern research university. But she was not happy, either with the location (in the middle of a vast expanse of one of the few kinds of rock that she really seems to find boring) or with the atmosphere of the place. And so, despite having got away with such subversive activities as smuggling a mention of Gaia into a lab manual chapter on biogeochemistry, and devising undergraduate classes that actually taught students something, she decided that she needed to move. Easier said than done. She was too far along in her career for ordinary entry-level positions, but not yet advanced enough for senior appointments. So she made the extraordinary decision to apply for a teaching job at Lawrence University, a tiny private liberal arts college in Wisconsin, and we must be glad that she did so.

Lawrence is clearly a very special kind of place. It educates not only its students (all 1500 of them), but its faculty, by involving all of them in its “great books” programme. And there, released from the treadmill of writing papers to gain grants to fund students to collect data to write papers, she has been able to explore at will and meditate on her findings, in the occasional specialist publication but also other outlets such as newspaper articles, and in a series of books including Timefulness, which I reviewed here earlier, and the present volume. (All this despite an unusually demanding family situation, and the responsibilities of rebuilding her department.) Read more »

by Richard Farr

The tree was immense even by local standards: a western red cedar that might have been a thousand years old. A botanist would want to measure it; I only wanted to touch its wrinkled face, or kneel among the roots and capture a dramatic snapshot looking up along the trunk. But it was fifty paces away and I couldn’t get there.

We were 300 miles northwest of Vancouver, as the raven flies, on one of the countless islands of the Great Bear Rainforest. The Great Bear covers 25,000 square miles of British Columbia’s Central Coast, which makes it about the size of Sri Lanka. You can get into it by road, sort of, if you take a long, long detour around the back of the coastal mountains to the Bella Coola valley. But water has always been the real road in this maze of islands and inlets, so instead we drove our kayaks to Port Hardy, on the northern tip of Vancouver Island, rolled them onto the ferry, and rolled them off five hours later at the geographical and spiritual heart of British Columbia’s Central Coast, the Heiltsuk community of Bella Bella. 

We paddled for twelve days. From the water we saw cormorants and sea otters beyond counting; porpoises; humpbacks. But the land seemed eerily empty, aside from a mink the color of salted chocolate that scampered past my feet one evening. Clawed prints in the sand. A few distant howls in the night. But the bears and wolves, and no doubt many other creatures, were perfectly hidden by the most dominant form of life, tens of millions of trees. 

They cover almost everything. On most of the islands, whether fifty square miles or the size of a room, the forest approaches the water like a shoulder-to-shoulder army marching over a cliff, the edge marked by a constant slow-motion falling. The only shore is a yellowish ring of hand-shredding, barnacle-encrusted boulders, fortifications so uniform that it can be hard to finding even the sketchiest place to land. Camping is possible only because some islands have pockets of white sand beach. 

Here, for me anyway, was a strange and arresting new experience of wilderness. Read more »

My favorite tree next to the river Eisack in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

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by Katalin Balog

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Laments about young people’s declining mental health, their inability to read novels, contemplate art, or simply pay undivided attention to anything at all have reached a panicky intensity lately. Not being particularly young, I can distinctly remember a time when things were less dire in this regard (except for the mental health part, having grown up in Eastern Europe…). We loved the films of Antonioni, Bergman, Tarkovsky, and Tarr, whose slow pace, for the most part, would be out of the question in today’s film industry. We were able to entertain ourselves without being entertained.

I propose that there is a common thread to these problems, and of course, they don’t only afflict the kids. We are all losing our ability to engage in a way of thinking I call contemplation. Young people are in an especially difficult place: whereas older people still remember and possess that ability to some degree, younger people have not had much opportunity to pick it up in the first place. And while it always required a certain amount of leisure and cultivation, a certain amount of groundedness and prosperity, today, contemplation is widely underappreciated and is in decline.

Contemplation is more than simply having experience; not all experiencing counts as contemplation – otherwise, we would all be automatically non-stop contemplators! In contemplation, experience is “held” in attention and explored without a particular goal in mind. This is different from other forms of attention deployed in thought or perception, which are fast-moving and task-oriented. Contemplation happens in small ways every time we stop to appreciate the world as we experience it, every time we are present for what is happening in a deliberate fashion, rather than breezing through in automatic pilot (or being absorbed in thought to the exclusion of experience). This could be a momentary lingering on someone’s body language or the way they express themselves. It could be an experience of merging with the natural environment. It could be a state of reflection reading a novel or poem. It could be just sitting and mulling over some experience of the day. Thomas Nagel said that there is “something it’s like” to have an experience. Contemplation then is attention to what it’s like. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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Julya Hajnoczky. Boletinellus Merulioides, 2021.

Archival pigment print.

More here and here.

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by Bill Murray

Maybe it’s defeat in a short, sharp war far from home. Maybe Russia captures Ukraine, or China attacks Taiwan. Maybe nothing happens yet, maybe it’s four or eight years away, but however the big change comes we’ll all agree the signs were there all along.

Our executive branch is hobbled by an exhausted leader. Our legislative branch is unable to legislate and our Supreme Court has found sudden delight in partisanship.

This election was exhausting. We just got a lesson in how riven America is, culturally and politically. Until President Biden stood down, our political parties had both put up candidates unfit for the presidency. And yet one of those candidates is now set to govern.

After months of total immersion in the campaign, and in place of recriminations and hand wringing, this might be a good time to put down our partisanship and consider America’s place in the world.

As soon as we raise our heads from our screens it’s clear: the United States is promising the world more than it is prepared to deliver. It has no business claiming it can defend Europe against Russia and Taiwan against China at the same time. You know it, every international player knows it, and if America continues to claim that it’s so it will be called out soon enough.

So we need to make some changes. This was going to be true whichever party won the election, and if America gets the coming decade wrong, time-tested elements of the US-underwritten world operating system (US OS) will struggle to endure.

I argue not from ideology but from pragmatism, and maybe a bit of dated idealism. Read more »

by Carol A Westbrook

This autumn we had to buy two cars.

If you are a typical, average, middle-class American, there are times in your life when you have to buy a car. Americans take car ownership—and car buying—very seriously. Since cars and their accessories (insurance, maintainence, repair, e.) occupy such a large part of the family budget, selecting the right one becomes one of the most important decisions that you can make as a family or an individual. And there are many sources of help, from innumerable magazines like Car and Driver, Consumers’ Report, etc.,  television review shows, friends and relatives. We were fortunate to have a guardian angel in our quest—Chris, a longtime friend who happens to be an automotive engineer who works for General Motors’ building the infotainment systems in their electric vehicles.He was a great source of information for us, and convinced us to look at electric vehicles (EV’s).

We needed two vehicles to keep up with our family and work obligations. Rick needed a new car as the cost of upkeep for his 13-year-old BMW was almost as much as the cost of the car itself. And I was recovering from a motor-vehicle accident which left my 3-year-old SUV so damaged that my insurance company declared it totaled—and provided me with a comfortable settlement that would allow me to purchase a moderately priced car. After much discussion we decided it was time to go electric. We would each purchase electric vehicles (EV’s). And I was insistent that our cars had to have color—no more white, black or gray.

We shopped carefully to get the best deals. Rick found that Hertz was selling off its fleet of Tesla Model 3 EV’s. Although Teslas were considered luxury cars, they were not popular with Hertz customers, most of whom had no experience with EV’s. As for myself, I did not see myself driving the sport-car-like Tesla with its fast acceleration; I preferred a replacement SUV that was sedate, safe and stylish. I scoured used-car sites to find a Chevy Bolt. A red Chevy Bolt. There were government incentives in the form of tax rebates for purchasing a used EV. We also learned that EV’s do not age like Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) autos, because EV’s have so many fewer moving parts than ICE autos. One hundred thousand miles on an EV is not the same as it is on a ICE auto. It is possible to get a good deal on a car with high mileage because the seller does not understand this!

Soon we had two shiny, almost-new, red cars in our driveway. There was my 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV, and Rick’s 2023 Tesla Model 3. At first glance, they look like any other cars. But look carefully—no exhaust pipes! Read more »

Rattling My Cage

by Barry Goldman

“Who is rich?” the Talmud asks. “He who is satisfied with what he has.”

By that measure, I’m richer than Musk and Bezos. I’m richer than Stephen Schwartzman, head of the Blackstone Group. Far richer than Trump. It’s a nice feeling.

Part of the explanation for this is that I am an old man. Getting and spending is a young man’s game. I have no interest in new toys. Part of the explanation has to do with my particular circumstances. I have been very lucky. But the bulk of the explanation has less to do with how much I have than with how little I want.

I like to sit in my reclining chair with my feet on the footrest and Gracie, one of our Maine Coons, on the arm rest. We are in precisely this configuration as I write. I don’t see how my condition would improve if I had a 25-room house. Or a private island in the Caribbean.

There is a wonderful story about Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great. It seems Diogenes was relaxing in the sunshine one afternoon when Alexander walked over. He said, “I’m Emperor Alexander the Great, ruler of the known world. I control limitless wealth of every description. They tell me you’re Diogenes, and you’re very wise. What can I do for you? Name it and it’s yours.” Diogenes said, “Could you move over, you’re blocking my light.”

I feel like that. I don’t want Jeff Bezos’ yacht or Stephen Schwartzman’s mansion. I don’t see the point. I can only sit in one chair at a time, and I’m already sitting in one.

I am not saying this to brag about my virtue. My attitude isn’t virtuous. Bezos’ and Schwartzman’s attitude is pathological. Read more »

by Eric Schenck

Rowing is a sport that you naturally underestimate. You think of canoes, of guys with perfect hair, of leisurely strolls on a lake while the glorious sun shines down.

From my experience, that’s not even close to the truth.

In reality, it’s brutal. If you’re doing it right (going fast) rowing is torture for the body. Not canoes, but long shells that only move if you do. Not perfect hair, but blacked out vision and legs on fire. Not a glorious sun, but on the water by 6 AM and a January river that doesn’t care how freezing you are.

Rowing will chew you up and spit you out.

And it’s worth every second. Read more »

by Philip Graham

For over twenty years I have been in awe of David Jauss as a writer, as a colleague and teacher, and above all for his insight into the contradictory human heart. His short stories have been gathered together in two essential collections, Glossolalia and Nice People, and many of these stories, I believe, take their rightful place among the best short fictions in American literature. He is a master of the precise, illuminating moment, and the clarity of his prose is deepened by his parallel work as a poet.

It’s not surprising that his poetry collections, Improvising Rivers and You Are Not Here, are, in turn, informed by his work as a fiction writer. Jauss’s poems aren’t afraid of the tug of narrative. And because of his love of music, particularly jazz, he is more attuned than most writers to the importance of rhythm, unexpected harmonies, and structural invention in writing, whether prose or poetry.

Jauss is also the author of two important collections of craft essays, Alone with All that Could Happen, and, most recently, Words Made Flesh. David and I were colleagues for ten years at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I remember quickly learning to attend his craft lectures. David knew how to see through the common clichés of creative writing advice, whether it might be the accepted modes of characterization, the “flow” of prose rhythm, use of epiphanies in short fiction, or constricting notions of what constitutes a plot. The audiences for his lectures were always filled with both students and fellow faculty members because we knew that, when David spoke, we would all become his apprentices, and happily so. Read more »

I went a bit “meta” this week with this self-portrait by reflection in a framed photograph of my wife taken by Tanyth Berkeley which hangs in my office.

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by Rebecca Baumgartner

A seat by the fire

I remember listening to President Obama’s first Inaugural Address fifteen years ago because of something Obama said which, according to the political pundits, had never been expressed in a Presidential speech before. This was the moment in question:

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself…” (italics added)

I had never heard a politician mention non-believers before. Nor had the rest of the country. Obama was stretching the definition of American pluralism further than it had typically been stretched, certainly further than it had ever been stretched in a mainstream political speech. A few journalists commented on it in the days following the speech, but the nod to non-believers was hardly the most significant moment of that day. 

Unless, that is, you were one of those non-believers, inured to years of prayers and biblical references in every public speech and ceremony (including elsewhere in Obama’s own speech); inured to saying “One nation under God” in school; inured to all the ways that the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment are routinely violated in public buildings and by those in elected office. 

These speeches, buildings, and laws are for all of us, but in practice they are treated as belonging to only those Americans who hold specific religious beliefs. Here, at last, was a President explicitly welcoming non-religious citizens to a seat by the fire: my fellow Americans.  Read more »

by Mike O’Brien

It has been a busy few months in the field of animal studies. It seems like every month is a busy one for animal studies these days, which is salutary. As a hobbyist follower of this area of study, every time I turn around there is a new line of research to catch up on. All the better for me, as it eats up reading time that might otherwise be spent doom-scrolling through the latest outrages and tragedies. Save me from myself, you heroes of scholarship.

The first item of note is the honouring of Lori Gruen as “Distinguished Philosopher of the Year” by the Eastern division of the Society for Women in Philosophy, an American organization that has been supporting and promoting women philosophers for over fifty years. Gruen is a prolific and influential figure in the ecofeminist tradition, focusing mainly on environmental and animal ethics as well as on the ethics of incarceration, and has published extensively over the last three decades. She has also been a mentor, collaborator and co-author with many other people in the field, and I have come across her work several times over the last few years while reading through other researchers’ bibliographies.

I haven’t read enough of her work or ecofeminist work generally to have a well-informed opinion of it, but my not-well-informed sense is that it leans towards normative ethics and elaborating the entailments of posited moral facts, which is outside of my preferred meta-ethical wicket. (Once the worm of Nietzschean critique gets into your brain, it becomes difficult to find any enthusiasm for the discovery or analytical definition of moral facts). I also have some general misgivings about the essentialist bent of much of the ecofeminist work that I’ve encountered (e.g. relational ethics is feminist, empiricist science is patriarchal), which has kept me from engaging with that literature more than incidentally. I nevertheless remain open to the possibility that these impressions are mistaken and, given that most of the targets of ecofeminist critique are certainly real and disastrously powerful, I am glad that they have their oars in the water, paddling in roughly the right direction. This is a common muddle in normative ethics, where some things are so obviously wrong (animal cruelty, systemic racism, environmental destruction) that a very wide swath of viewpoints can converge on a common conclusion despite profound disagreements about facts, values and methods.

Coincidentally, Gruen co-authored an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the Wikipedia of academic philosophy) on “The moral status of animals” with another animal philosopher who has been in the news of late. Susana Monsó, whom I have mentioned in earlier columns owing to her co-authorship with Kristin Andrews of several works, has been hitting the interview circuit to discuss her book “Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death”, newly translated to English. The book explores the experience and understanding of death among non-human animals, using examples from wild and captive creatures to argue that many animals do in fact have a concept of death. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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by Rachel Robison-Greene

In 524, the Roman philosopher Boethius was imprisoned in exile awaiting his execution. He was used a as a political tool and was convicted on false charges, including the charge of sorcery. In these dire conditions, he wrote The Consolations of Philosophy in which his muse, Lady Philosophy, appears to him to provide her “doctor’s help” for his anguish. She speaks to him in verse,

Why then are miserable men in awe
When tyrants rage impotently?
If you first rid yourself of hope or fear
You have disarmed the tyrant’s wrath
But whosoever quakes in fear or hope
Drifting and losing mastery
Has cast away his shield, has left his place
And binds the chains with which he
Will be bound.

The advice that Lady Philosophy imparts to Boethius resembles that offered by the Stoics—we cannot control external circumstances. We can’t prevent people from being ignorant and cruel. We can’t stop tyrants from manipulating and harming people in pursuit of power. Chaos, suffering, and death are inevitabilities. In challenging times, we must focus only on what we can control—what is in our own minds. For Boethius and for the Stoics, desperate times (and all other times) call for a turn toward philosophical reflection on the nature of virtue and of the good life.

In The Enchiridion, the former slave turned Stoic philosopher Epictetus takes the idea that we ought not to be concerned with what is outside of our control to an extreme. He says,

With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.

Most people in search of a philosophy for hard times would be unlikely to go this far. What is needed is a path forward that allows us to cope with tragedy and injustice without abandoning the value of people we care about or the issues we find important. We long for solutions that ease our anxiety but also provide us with reasons to live. Read more »