Cousin Claire sent along a recent Slate article about the classic Rudyard Kipling story “Rikki Tikki Tavi.” As children, Claire and I both loved the brave little mongoose that saves a family from a scheming cobra and her mate. And when I taught school, I enjoyed sharing the tale with students.
For James Parker, it’s the greatest short story of all time. “Kipling was an instinctive anthropomorphizer — quite a heathen, in that way. He’d give a human personality as readily to a merchant steamer as to a mongoose. It’s the particular triumph of his animal characters, however, that they never become merely allegorical — or rather, they become allegorical while retaining their singularity and animality.
“Rikki-tikki in his violent happiness represents bravery and battle-joy and life-appetite, without ceasing for an instant to be a mongoose. Chuchundra the muskrat who creeps by the wall (‘ “I am a very poor man,” he sobbed. “I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room.” ‘) is timidity itself, the unlived life, but he is also a wet-whiskered muskrat in a dark corner.” Read more here about Parker’s love for the story. Better yet, read the story.
Around the country, art is playing a role in improving the livability of cities and towns.
Peter Brewitt writes at Orion magazine, “Over the past decade, communities across the nation have taken to beautifying their roads and intersections with hand-painted murals, slowing drivers as they go. Murals like these come at minimal cost — just buy some street-grade paint, get whatever permits your city requires, and figure out how to reroute traffic for a few hours. As people motor through the neighborhood, murals catch the eye, situate the mind, and lighten the right foot.
“Many of these creations did not begin as traffic-control devices — the goal was often to engage the neighborhood with itself, to display its spirits and hopes for the future, and to embrace the spaces that bind people together. But art touches drivers as well as neighbors …
“Paint the Pavement [PtP], a street-art program in Saint Paul, Minnesota … offers support and advice, but the groups of friends and neighbors creating the art are self-organized and volunteer-run.”
Learn more about enlivening your neighborhood with pavement painting, here. Hat tip to Mary Ann on Facebook.
It’s an interesting art form. More lasting than children’s sidewalk chalks — which doesn’t mean that chalk is passé. In my work neighborhood, grownups have been taking up sidewalk chalk art, and I can attest that people smile when they see it.
Fireflies are not as ubiquitous as they used to be, and that’s a concern. They are like the canary in the mine. If fireflies go, other species go.
What has caused the decline? Lawn chemicals? Rapid urbanization? Scientists want to know.
NY Times reporter Alan Bllinder writes from Greenville, South Carolina, about a crowdsourced research project to help figure out what’s going on.
“As dusk faded over the home of Jeremy Lyons and his sons on a recent evening here, one ritual of the Southern summer — the soft hiss of a can of mosquito repellent — signaled that the start of another was near.
“And although Raine Lyons, 6, grimaced, coughed and flinched during his dousing with bug spray, he soon stood near a chain-link fence in his backyard and shouted, in speedy succession: ‘Found one! Found one! Found one!’ Mr. Lyons, perched on his knee next to Raine, was almost completely silent as he tapped the screen of his cellphone again and again and again.
“There, on a weeknight in a South Carolina backyard, a father and his son, in their different ways, were counting fireflies. But an evening among fireflies was not merely a modest round of summertime nostalgia; instead, it was part of a multiyear quest by Clemson University researchers to measure the firefly population and investigate whether urbanization, especially here in the fast-growing South, threatens the insects.” Read how they are going about it here.
I hope we can reverse the decline of fireflies. I have so many happy memories of them from my childhood and my children’s childhood.
Photo: Jacob Biba for The New York Times Raine Lyons counting fireflies alongside his father, Jeremy, in Greenville, S.C., as volunteers in the Vanishing Firefly Project of Clemson University.
When I lived in Minneapolis (1997-2000), I liked to walk in Loring Park. It was a lovely oasis located right downtown. The only problem was you really had to watch your step. Canada Geese frequented its pond and besmirched the grass and sidewalks.
Then one year, the city had an idea. It planted tall grasses around the perimeter of the pond. Before you knew it, no more geese! At the time, I was told that geese didn’t like the way the grasses feel on their feet when they come out of the water. But an article yesterday about the use of tall grasses at an Ohio airport said birds like geese fear long grasses because they could be hiding predators.
Whatever works.
Scott Mayerowitz reported the story for the Associated Press. “One Ohio airport is now experimenting with a new, gentler way to avoid bird strikes: planting tall prairie grass. …
“Says Terrence G. Slaybaugh, director of Dayton’s airport. ‘If we are going to protect the long term use of airports in an increasingly populated area, we need to be less intrusive and find ways to contribute in a positive way to our surroundings.’
“The thick grass has other benefits: preventing water runoff, taking carbon dioxide out of the air and requiring only one mowing every three years. Bird lovers are also excited about the use of non-lethal methods to keep birds away from the airport. The airport’s neighbor, the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, has been working closely with aviation officials on the tall grass project.
” ‘It’s a watershed moment. Our airport is embracing it,’ says Charity Krueger, executive director of the center.’ ” More here.
Photo: Chris Gregorson Loring Park, Minneapolis. Note the tall grasses around the pond.
And speaking of slate, Suzanne’s company, Luna & Stella, displayed birthstone jewelry on slate brought from Wales by Erik’s family and got a lot of compliments at New York’s Playtime trade show. In fact, one store asked if they could buy some for display!
Suzanne was not up for selling the slates, however. After all, she asked Erik’s sister and brother-in-law to cart them home to Denmark after a joint visit to Wales and then bring them to the US on their vacation. I’m not sure they would do that twice. As a bemused Klaus recounted after his son’s luggage failed to materialize, “We got to the US with no clothes for Axel, but the bag of rocks made it through just fine.”
Suzanne and Luna & Stella will be at the giant NY Now trade show in the next few days (Javits Center, August 16-20). Stop in at her booth if you are there. And you may very well be there as it seems like half the world goes.
From the NY Now website: “2,800 exhibitors and thousands of lines across 400 categories; 35,000 buyers representing 20,000 companies; they travel from all 50 states and 85 foreign countries; 98% place orders based on what they see at the Show; 78% write orders on the Show floor; 38% are new buyers.” More here.
The last time I checked into the always intriguing website This Is Colossal, I followed a link to My Modern Met, where Katie Hosmer writes about a trampoline that people are bouncing on in the Llechwedd slate caverns of Wales.
“This underground labyrinth of netting is a giant trampoline playground set inside a slate quarry cavern in the Welsh mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Developed by Zip World, Bounce Below [offers] visitors a playful experience deep beneath the surface of the earth.
“The tourist attraction features three giant trampolines suspended across the cave, ranging from 20 feet to 180 feet high. Ten foot net walls prevent people from climbing out, while walkways connect the trampolines, and slides offer an easy way to exit. As visitors jump around, the walls of the surrounding cavern are illuminated with glowing blue, green, pink, and purple lights.
” ‘We got the idea when my business partner saw this done in woods in France but this has never been done in a cavern, this really is a world first in Wales,’ says Sean Taylor, owner of Zip World. ‘It’s a one hour activity where customers get dressed up in a cotton overall and given a helmet; they then jump on a train and travel inside the mountain.’ ” More crazy pictures at My Modern Met, here.
How do you keep ’em down in the bouncy house after they’ve seen cave trampolining?
Play is important for all kinds of reasons in childhood, including testing out skills and experiencing the satisfaction of creativity.
John Poole at National Public Radio focused on the socialization aspects of play in a recent report.
He began, “Why do we humans like to play so much? Play sports, play tag, play the stock market, play duck, duck, goose? We love it all. And we’re not the only ones. Dogs, cats, bears, even birds seem to like to play. …
“The scientist who has perhaps done more research on brains at play than any other is a man named Jaak Panksepp. And he has developed a pretty good hypothesis.
“In a nutshell, he, and many others, think play is how we social animals learn the rules of being social. …
“Play seems so deeply wired by evolution into the brains of highly social animals that it might not be a stretch to say that play is crucial to how we and they learn much of what we know that isn’t instinct. …
“Not surprisingly, Panksepp and others think the lack of play is a serious problem. Especially at younger ages. And particularly in school settings. …
” ‘It’s not just superfluous,’ says Panksepp. ‘It’s a very valuable thing for childhood development. And we as a culture have to learn to use it properly and have to make sure our kids get plenty of it.’ ” More here.
More still from Jon Hamilton, another reporter in the NPR series on play, here.
Photo: David Gilkey/NPR
Deion Jefferson, 10, and Samuel Jefferson, 7, take turns climbing and jumping off a stack of old tires at the Berkeley Adventure Playground in California. The playground is a half-acre park with a junkyard feel where kids are encouraged to “play wild.”
I intended to go straight to YouTube after reading NY Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay’s enthusiastic review of jookin at a recent Memphis showcase. But then I couldn’t remember the name of the dancer or what the dance style was.
It’s jookin. And I can see why Macaulay — who can be utterly scathing about ballet dancers and choreographers who don’t meet his standard — is so ecstatic about jookin.
Macaulay writes about the rise of the form and a now-famous dancer called Lil Buck (born Charles Riley) at the NY Times: “In 2007 Katie Smythe, a ballet teacher working out of her native Memphis, was driving her most remarkable student, Charles Riley, across the Mississippi to a lecture-demonstration in Arkansas. Mr. Riley, a young man specializing in the local form of virtuoso hip-hop footwork known as jookin, had started taking ballet lessons to gain strength and extend his range.
“Ms. Smythe had already persuaded some jookin dancers to improvise to Haydn and Mozart. Now she asked Mr. Riley to perform to the cello ‘Swan’ music from Saint-Saëns’s suite ‘The Carnival of the Animals.’ …
“In jookin, men wearing sneakers dance a version of pointwork too. They don’t wear tights, and in those shoes they can’t straighten their knees, but they go onto tiptoe and ripple their arms with the hip-hop currents … When Ms. Smythe and Mr. Riley reached their destination, she introduced him to the audience and put on the music. Her school’s archivist filmed the performance and posted it on YouTube.
“In 2010 this YouTube video (no longer online) was spotted by Heather Watts, a former principal of New York City Ballet who had danced for George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and many other choreographers. …
“Watching this video of Lil Buck on YouTube, Ms. Watts was immediately electrified.” Read here how she helped him get national attention.
Jit is another type of street dance, from Detroit. I believe that is what you see in the second video, but I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
I have a bunch of island pictures for you again, having had a few days to take my time with things. The slow pace makes a nice change, but I wouldn’t want it every day of the year.
At least it has helped me make a serious dent in the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s multivolume memoirish novel.
The pictures don’t need much explanation. Wonderful clouds. Tiny jellyfish like diamonds where the waves pencil their retreat on the sandy shore. An approved path down the bluffs to a rocky beach.
Rhode Island taught me what the English meant by “shingle,” the smooth round stones that Matthew Arnold describes: “Listen, you hear the grating roar of pebbles, which the waves draw back and fling at their return up the high strand.” I first heard that sound in a Misquamicut motel at night, decades ago now.
A few years ago, John bought a small wooden rowboat secondhand. Even after he got a motor going, he never had as much use out of that boat as he expected, having been somewhat sidetracked like Toad of Toad Hall by a faster-moving windsurfer.
So a couple weeks ago, he put it out by the road with a For Sale sign.
Quite a few people stopped and looked, appearing to discuss with a reluctant partner whether to take on a worn wooden boat. Sandra suggested John pitch it to one of the seafood restaurants for use as a raw bar. Then I wondered if it could offer a competitive advantage as a lemonade stand once the grandkids got into the business.
But today a young man with dreadlocks came and bought it. The boat is going to a good home.
It seems that the buyer and his father actually built that boat years ago. He told my husband that a similar boat built around the same time ultimately landed in a dump in Newport, which made him sad. He said was happy to have this one back and was planning to fix it up in between hours spent renovating a double-ender fishing boat.
Walkability greatly improves the quality of life in a town or city, a precept our country lost track of for many years. I grew up in exurbia, where there were no sidewalks. And although I loved walks in the woods, I always felt a little gypped by the ads in comic books starting, “Be the first on your block …” What was a block? As an adult, I have lived only where there are sidewalks.
One of the most engaging recent developments of today’s walkability movement is Walk[YourCity], which enables you or anyone else to make professional-looking signs to interesting places in walking distance. (I love the stealth aspect of posting them.)
Suzanne and I began noticing signs in Providence a couple months ago, but it was only recently that some folks behind the effort blogged about it.
“Providence, RI, is playing host to two Walk [Your City] campaigns — both intended to activate public space and promote active transport.
“PopUp Providence is a placemaking project that ‘introduces interactive, artistic and cultural displays and interventions throughout the City’s 25 neighborhoods.’ W[YC] signage has been incorporated … Other first-season PopUp Providence projects include a pop-up music studio offering teaching and performance spaces, and a parklet adding seating to the streetscape. …
“Providence’s Planning Department mentioned W[YC] to folks from the I-195 Redevelopment District, who thought the signs would be a great way to direct folks to their interim use art installations — soon to include 12 creative installations throughout the I-195 downtown parcels.”
More at the Walk[YourCity] blog, here. (And may I just note that Providence has exactly the kind of creative, entrepreneurial climate that would lead people to embrace something like this.)
I’ve heard of nonprofits like Dress for Success that provide women with business clothes for their job search. At work, we’ve had donation drives for Dress for Success.
Recently, I read that there are similar organizations for men. NY Times reporter Rachel Swarns interviewed several men who have benefited from such organizations.
Joseph Campbell, writes Swarns, “didn’t have a suit hanging in the homeless shelter where he lives. So he arrived at a job placement agency last week in a black T-shirt, green canvas shorts and Nike boots. He had a job interview scheduled for 3:30 p.m. — his first in months — and he was itching to get going.
“But the case managers at the agency told him he had one last appointment before he headed out, for something unexpected: a fitting, and a second chance. …
“When the job counselors directed him to the Suited for Work office last week, he felt as if he had stumbled into a new world. Brand-new suit jackets from designers like Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis and Michael Kors hung from the racks. A kaleidoscope of ties beckoned. Dress shirts sat neatly stacked on the shelves, their pearly buttons calling for nimble fingers.
“Mr. Campbell had landed at one of the few nonprofits that provide jobless men with free suits and business attire. …
“With his job interview less than two hours away, the Suited for Work helpers scrambled to hem his trousers with safety pins and to replace his Nikes with a pair of wingtips.
“And then he was out the door, on the subway and arriving at his job interview right on time. The company manager, who interviewed him, offered him a part-time position on the spot, for $8 an hour.
“The two men shook hands on it and Mr. Campbell said goodbye.
On the whole, I believe in having zoos, but I do realize most of the animals would rather not be there.
So I was interested in a zoo concept that was tweeted this week by @SmallerCitiesU. It’s an article about a plan for a zoo in Denmark.
At Good magazine, Caroline Pham asks, “Is there an ethical way to publicly display captive animals? Danish architecture firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) is on a mission to answer that question with a hefty redesign of Denmark’s Givskud Zoo. …
“Their recently revealed plans for what has been dubbed ‘Zootopia’ attempt to mesh nature with inventive design in a 1,200,000 square meter park imagined under advisement from the zoo staff. Manmade buildings would hide within the constructed natural environments and animal habitats would mimic ones found in the wild as much as possible.
“Renderings showcase a circular central plaza with an ascending ramp-like border where visitors can enjoy panoramic views of the entire park, which features varying natural environments (that seem to be fairly open-air) connected by a four-kilometer hiking trail. …
“The project is currently in progress, with the first phase set for completion in 2019.” More here.
If you have the right skills, you can meet some very peculiar employer needs. In India, for example, people who can imitate macaque monkeys’ enemies are currently in demand.
Sean McLain and Aditi Malhotra sent a report to the Wall Street Journal about Mahesh Nath. His “assignment last week: Imitating monkey hoots and barks to scare other primates away from the bungalow of a member of parliament. …
“The calls mimic the warning noises of a territorial alpha-male gray langur monkey — a natural enemy of the smaller macaque monkey that has infested the leafy heart of New Delhi.
“Mr. Nath, a slightly built 40-year-old with a broken arm, calls himself a ‘monkey wallah,’ a South Asian term that loosely translates to ‘monkey man.’ He is part of a team of 40 men hired by municipal authorities to shoo pesky macaques away from prominent places where they don’t belong.
“ ‘It’s not a bad way to earn my bread and butter, and it is all I’ve got to look after my three daughters,’ says Mr. Nath…
“Macaques are a real nuisance. They uproot vegetables, strip fruit trees bare, overturn garbage cans and raid garden parties. …
“Until last summer, the capital’s streets were patrolled by actual langurs. Monkey wallahs and their male primate partners manned posh neighborhoods … But the Indian government decided a year ago to enforce a rule against keeping langurs, which are protected under India’s wildlife law, in captivity.
“Without their langur partners, many monkey men swung into other professions. Those like Mr. Nath, who stuck with it, had to perfect their langur impersonations and come up with other tactics. …
“The biggest threat Mr. Nath faces, other than the monkey horde, is a sore throat from all the grunting. He gargles with a traditional remedy of alum and water to avoid losing his voice. I have to take care of my throat, it’s critical to my job,’ he says.”
After I blogged about playing fairies in the backyard as a child, Ursula sent me a book from North Carolina, where she has been living for years. It was Flower Fairies of the Summer, by Cicely Mary Baker. It contains “The Song of the Yarrow Fairy” and many other illustrated fairy songs and is a real classic.
I thought about the book as I photographed a few summer flowers on recent morning walks. I can’t see the flowers’ fairies here (fairies don’t photograph well), but if you do, please let me know which flower.
Here are two kinds of lilies, a Rose of Sharon, yarrow and Queen Anne’s Lace together, and a trumpet vine growing beside Lakeside Drive.
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