Aesthetic value is a keystone of environmental philosophy. We love, and take care of, things we find beautiful. Biocitizen and HCC professor John Calhoun have made a commitment to work together for a year, walking together, learning, and creating art that is beautiful, that expresses important moments in, and facets of, Holyoke’s biocultural history. You...Continue Reading
A perfect after-Thanksgiving hike for those who want to walk a few miles off trail, sweat a little and get the feel of what Nonotuck would be like if there were no houses around—i.e., if it was wild: because walking from the Westhampton Public Library over Mt Pisgah—i.e., the Berkshire ridges that divide the CT...Continue Reading
If you know what bugs live in a river, you can gauge its health. So, every year just as Summer slips into Fall, the Biocitizen Corps ventures out and catches some, following EPA protocols, in a national citizen science initiative called “Rapid Bioassessments of Benthic Invertebrates.” Certain bugs need lots of oxygen. The cleanest coldest...Continue Reading
Biocitizens—it’s rapid biotic assessment time! Which means: time to get into the rivers and collect the bugs that live under rocks. The bugs tell us—by their amount, variety and size—how oxygenated (& healthy) our rivers are: an annual “physical,” just like at the doctors’. The Biocitizen Corps reunites in the early Fall to care for...Continue Reading
Allow me to give you an Earth Day gift I’ve been trying to wrap up ever since I studied under an eminent Thoreau scholar who, in his first lecture, handed it to me—by saying: “For Thoreau, nature was a symbol.” “A symbol of what?” I blurted, admittedly interrupting but…come on: a symbol? “Of God, of...Continue Reading
Our national economy isn’t making us happy. We don’t want to contribute to global warming, for example, but our economy does and so do we. We don’t want to drink plastic-bottle water, and fill up the sea and cover the land with them, but the tap water tastes bad or we’re traveling or whatever. Many,...Continue Reading
Ah, spring is here, time for serious cleaning of gardens and basements. I’m going to clean Biocitizen of the concept of the “environment,” mainly because, beyond its status as a concept, there is no such thing. What the EPA calls the “environment”—The sum of all external conditions affecting the life, development and survival of an...Continue Reading
Written today in Zipolite, Mexico on the Playa Amor. Yes: wonky, truncated, imperfect—but do please read and comment. Notes for a definition of Field Environmental Philosophy (FEP) Historical and epistemological background— 1) The academic industrial complex has succeeded in graduating several generations who have no “place” and are now suffering from it, economically, politically, aesthetically,...Continue Reading
