Thought for the Day

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."—Carl Sagan

Pondering the Universe and Our Place In It

Pour yourself a nice cup of tea (or whatever) and enjoy this tour of the cosmos from the American Museum of Natural History.

Greenpeace

See also the New York Times interview with the new Executive Director at Greenpeace.

Best Bee Photos Ever

You are now in for a tremendous treat. My friend Andrew recently hooked me up with the website of the extraordinary photographer Eric Tourneret—a.k.a. The Bee Photographer. (Thank you a thousand times, Andrew!)

The site can be enjoyed in several different ways. You can browse these wonderful honeybee photos by topic, selecting from swarming, apiculture, pollination, honey, bees in history, and city bees.

Or you can visit the bees by country, viewing striking photos of bees and beekeeping in Nepal, Argentina, Cameroon, Mexico, Romania and Russia. Sample, for instance, this incandescent series of beekeeping-related images from France: the poppies! the sunflowers! the mountains! the hive-carrying donkeys! the drones!

And then there's Cameroon, where ancient honey-gatheing methods still prevail in the Adamwa forest or the death-defying cliff-climbing of the Nepali "tiger-men" who gather honeycomb from the world's largest bee.

Prince (Metaphorically) Kisses Frog

The Silence of the Bees

Just a reminder of what's at stake.

Mood Swings

We've gone from bitterly upset about the new (and unsurprising) report that America's birds are in deep peril (thanks to our collective ecological mental health problem) to exceedingly thrilled by the news that the Obamas are going to plant a vegetable patch on the White House Lawn.
But it gets even better: "A White House carpenter who is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey,"quoth the New York Times.
To read about one of the groups that advocated tirelessly for this exceedingly good idea, visit eattheview.org.

You can also say a proper thankee for this Good Thing by going hereabouts.

And you can learn some interesting fun facts about the White House, Victory Gardens of the past, ecological activities prior presidents (except for you-know-who) have undertaken, and all that sort of thing by heading over here.
Of course, this doesn't mean we're forgetting about the birds.

Red Hook, Brooklyn—Agriculture USA

Brigitte Bardot Belittles Barracuda

This just in from Huffpo:

French film legend-turned-activist Brigitte Bardot took a swipe at Sarah Palin on Tuesday, saying the US vice presidential candidate was a disgrace to women.

"I hope you lose these elections because that would be a victory for the world," Bardot wrote in an open letter to Republican John McCain's running mate in the November vote.

"By denying the responsibility of man in global warming, by advocating gun rights and making statements that are disconcertingly stupid, you are a disgrace to women and you alone represent a terrible threat, a true environmental catastrophe," wrote Bardot.

The screen icon from the 1960s, who now heads an animal rights foundation, went on to assail Palin for supporting Arctic oil exploration that could jeopardize delicate animal habitats and for dismissing measures to protect polar bears.

"This shows your total lack of responsibility, your inability to protect or simply respect animal life," Bardot wrote.

In a final salvo against Palin, the 74-year-old ex-star picked up on Palin's depiction of herself as a pitbull wearing lipstick and said she "implored" her not to compare herself to dogs.

"I know them well and I can assure you that no pitbull, no dog, nor any other animal for that matter is as dangerous as you are," Bardot wrote.

I couldn't agree more on all counts...and the phrase "disconcertingly stupid" wins my vote for Palin-related pronouncement of the day.

Fab Farmer Gets "Genius Award"

Meet Will Allen, founder of the Milwaukee-based organization, Growing Power. Here's the kind of person America needs more of.

Indeed, with all the nonsense going on lately, it's refreshing to hear a good story about a sane person contributing to the well-being of his community—and the earth—through those most potent of exertions, sustainable ag and yes, community organizing. And naturally, bees are part of the package.

Super-psyched to see Mr. Allen's great work recognized and rewarded by the MacArthur Foundation. Check out this video interview.

Live long and prosper, Will Allen!

A Memory, A Wish

There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

—Wendell Berry, from "How To Be a Poet"

One of the best parts of being in the middle of nowhere is the fact that every walk is rewarded with a sighting of something new and unfamiliar.One day, perhaps, it's an unusual caterpillar, pelted (alas) by hail. Another day (yesterday, in fact), it's a lone orchid in the woods or a stand of long-searched-for chanterelles. Today, it was a green heron regally posed at the side of the dead-end road near the neighbor's pond.

When I was a kid at the very wonderful Farm & Wilderness Camps in the Exceedingly Great State of Vermont, I had a memorable and influential counselor named Linda Lee.

Linda was a kindred spirit—a term I almost never use. She was a wise and loving guide for my burgeoning adoration of the natural world.

One August afternoon, while Linda and I were walking in the woods, I mentioned how much I hoped, one day, to see a wood frog—a beautiful species I'd looked at only in books.

Linda said she'd found that, sometimes, by simply asking something of Mother Nature with respect and humility, special creatures would appear or events unfold or requests be answered. Sometimes, she said, you just have to ask in the proper spirit. So I did.

And guess what? Within moments a tiny wood frog with its softly banded, raccoon-ish face and its mushroom-brown body, appeared in the path on which Linda Lee and I walked that unforgettable walk.

I so hope to live to see a day when we can accord nature the respect it—she—we deserve, for as surely as we sink, sell, denigrate, and disparage Mother Nature—from whom (it's only too obvious to say and too easy to ignore) we all come and to whom (hat in hand) we'll soon enough return—we sink, sell, denigrate, and disparage ourselves.

That is why I hope we will take action to resist this latest bit of nonsense from President Cheney and the BushPuppet from Hell, Inc.—because Mother Nature and her growing cadre of endangered flora and fauna cannot issue press briefings, sue on their own behalf, take up arms to defend themselves, hire a lobbyist, or pose for a nauseating photo op with Condi Rice.

It's up to us to decide just how much desecration we're going to stand for—in every sense of the term.

Ant Farm

Two inexplicable habits have take hold this summer: the adoption of a mason jar as my favorite drinking glass and a tendency, weather permitting, to lunch on the front steps of my house, rather than up by the vegetable garden—in a proper chair, a creaky old Adirondack chair—as I have in the five summers I’ve been in this place.

The mason jar has a smooth, thick rim that feels good on my lips, and something about a jar like that conjures thoughts of lemonade, simplicity, and summers past—way past, like before I was born.

But it’s the latter passion that’s the subject of this essay, for here there are no cars going by, no passersby in intriguing garb, no chats with neighbors, no stage-whispered cell phone diatribes, and no public psychodramas, as may be enjoyed (or not) from my stoop in Brooklyn. (Where I—in friendlier, less frenetic, and decidedly younger days—spent a fair amount of time until a prodigious band of house sparrows took up residence near a window sill above my favored spot, literally unseating me with a maelstrom of wayward nesting materials and nefarious effluvium.)

In short, there’s nothing much to be gained from sitting on the front steps of this remote rural farmhouse, except a view of the dog’s muddy water bowl and a two-by-two-foot patch of cement—the only cement around, except for the old barn foundation out back. The view from the vegetable garden up the hill is far superior, with its bee-loud glade of borage and its flowering dill, upon which the wasp-waisted wasps alight with balletic grace.

The stoop is where I’m sitting now, and it’s hard on back and butt alike. But it’s here that lunch is now being served, accompanied by iced mint tea in a Ball jar. And it’s here that I’ve come upon something that easily upstages the dog bowl on my attention-o-meter.

I’m referring, of course, to that inevitable sidekick of concrete, the ant. Cement, ants, and hot summer days—they go together like PB and J, but then ants go with pretty much everything.As a city kid dysphoric with the conviction that I was meant for the farm, attention to sky above and earth below meant awareness of whatever hint of wildlife might be glimpsed on a typical Manhattan sidewalk. Sometimes it was a ladybug or fallen fledgling. Once, I remember, it was a praying mantis—indelible thrill. But, for the most part, in the flat, unyielding kingdom of concrete, ants ruled the roost. I spent hours watching, following, and yes, annoying them.

Ants have continued to hold my interest to some degree over the years; I’ll never forget seeing a seemingly unending line of leafcutter ants marching in perfect single file across the forest floor in a Costa Rican cloud forest, leaf fragments held proudly aloft in their impressive mandibles. But in terms of piquing deep interest, ants have definitely taken a back seat, as it were, to moths, butterflies, caterpillars, worms, and other bugs in these, my “adult years.”
Beekeeping recharged my interest in ants. Honeybees and ants are, after all, the most advanced of social insects. They share much in common besides smarts, industriousness, and good looks—including caste systems, queens, female workers, and exceedingly intricate lifestyles. They also share a sweet spot on the Linnaean roadmap under the order Hymenoptera [meaning hymen (membrane) + pteron (wing)].

So taking my lunch on the stoop now includes watching the ants—at least three different species, if I’m not mistaken—go about their busy business. My observations are of the most rudimentary kind: There’s an ant carrying a blade of grass (what for? food? housing material? a sword?). There’s an ant that seems to be just wandering (scoping out new territory? coming back to the colony after important business in town? looking for food?). There’s an ant staggering under the weight of a much larger, dead ant (an enemy killed? a random piece of food located by chance?).

I watch from above, more distant than I’d like to be, even when, lured by fascination, I find myself down on hands and knees to get a closer look. Always, my vantage point is that of an ill-informed observer with barely a clue about the proceedings, an outsider of astonishing proportions.Not that it would improve my understanding, but I do wish my renewed interest had taken hold a few years ago, when my vision was sharper. Now, it’s all about pulling off my eyeglasses and getting in some true “face-time” with my tiny brethren. But crawling around like that, face to the ground, gets the dog all excited and causes no end of distraction to all concerned.

I have the same wish about my start in beekeeping—younger eyes would have been a real advantage in locating those tiny, all-important eggs deep in their cells during hive inspections. Often, I must content myself with locating larvae, which, being further along on their developmental journey, are big enough to be readily seen. But with the bee-veil and the difficulty of removing eyeglasses with a veil on, important details—and the pleasures of deep viewing—are muted or lost. The answer, I suppose, is to get braver about skipping the veil and better at handling the bees so the veil isn’t quite so essential; alas, I’m not there yet.But let’s keep our eye on the prize here: the manifold fascinations of ant-watching. Try it next time you’re just about anywhere. There are ants in the trees, on the ground, in your backyard, at your picnic and quite possibly hanging around your kitchen.

I spilled a little honey on the porch the other day and within a couple of hours, two big black ants were in serious honey-removal mode right there on the porch—I mean, inside, where never before had I seen an ant appear. Like honeybees, ants are smart. They’re watching you.

Early this summer, I found some ants “tending” aphids on a burdock—a behavior I’d read about with fascination but never witnessed first-hand. Assuming the guise of dairy farmers, ants protect and care for the tiny aphids and then “milk” them to obtain the sweet liquids that exude from the aphids’ bodies. This is symbiosis, ranching, mutualism, and mind-blowing intricacy all rolled up into one, right there, on a weed along the driveway’s edge.According to a new and much needed field guide called Ants of North America, there may be as many as 1,000 species of ants in North America alone. From the introduction:

“There is something profoundly fascinating about ants, even when they are being a nuisance. In large part, this is because they do many things that remind us of ourselves, and have been doing them for over 100 million years. Like humans, ants are social, living exclusively in highly organized societies that evolved originally from family groups (in the case of ants, the group consists of a mother and her offspring). Like humans, ants exhibit a seemingly endless variety of complex social behaviors. Ants were the first herders, agriculturalists, and food storage experts. Some ants fight vicious territorial wars, some ‘enslave’ other ants, and in North America alone, over 20 species of predatory army ants march in leaderless packs on perpetual campaign. On the brighter side, they take excellent care of their mothers and their sisters, and even their brothers and sons—who do little but eat and never help with the chores.”

That last bit, of course, echoes the honeybee approach to living, while the part about predatory army ants “on perpetual campaign” makes me wonder if our quote unquote leadership in Washington might possibly be an abnormally large, badly misshapen, and intellectually inferior species of ant yet to be identified as such and taxonomically put in its place.
Here’s a bit more from the intro to Ants of North America:

“Sadly, few comprehend the vital importance of ants to the ecosystems that sustain human life on this planet. In North America, for example, close to 1,000 species of ants play an essential role in the proper functioning of nearly all terrestrial ecosystems. They are prominent agents in the breakdown of organic matter, nutrient cycling, soil turnover and aeration, seed dispersal, seed consumption, and plant protection. If ants went on strike and ceased their ecological services, the consequences would be profoundly disruptive to the natural world—and eventually tragic for humanity.”

Talk about an underrated treasure.

Of Happiness

Someone should sponsor a study of the beneficial health effects of looking at bluebirds. Something primal—an ancient, latent spark inside that dearly loves a flash of blue—awakens. It's deep. It's potent. It's Happy as Hell. Bottle that, and the world's problems are solved.Most years, the tree swallows (lovely in their own right) bully the shy bluebirds out of the boxes we have designated for them—for who are we to decide such things?

It's a psychodrama (for me) every year. But this spring, in a bird house half-hidden by shrubs, a flash of blue informed us that a bluebird had moved in, and over the next few weeks we saw him swerving down from his fence post to feed and traveling about with his more subtly colored mate.

In mid-June, things began to seem mighty quiet at the box and I began to have an uneasy feeling about the state of affairs at Bluebird Manor. At first, I kept my distance, respecting the birds' private nature, until one afternoon curiosity got the better of me and I peeked into the entry hole and saw a glimpse of wing—unmoving—in an upright position inside the box. It occurred to me that either the bird inside was dead or was posturing defensively in response to my presence.

I waited a few days and watched the box for a sign of life that never came. Finally, I investigated and found the female dead in the nest, with an egg partially protruding from her body. I headed home in despair, googled something along the lines of "bluebird dead laying egg" and learned of a condition known as "egg bound" or "egg binding," wherein a bird is unable to pass her egg and dies.

Spending time in the country offers the pleasure of almost overwhelming exposure to a seemingly endless array of life forms (it beats Star Trek by miles, light years, and warp speeds), but there's plenty of death to go with all the living. The balance, while sometimes painful, is good—a reminder of that which we need reminding of.

Still, I was disturbed by the female's probably painful death, disappointed that we'd have no young ones this year, and kind of heartbroken to think of this lovely bird making the long migration north, mating, and nest-building only to die in childbirth. It's a lot of effort for these sweet creatures to go through, and it hurts to see it end sadly, for the blue or any other bird.

Seeing the male around in the weeks that followed gave me additional pangs. Would Mr. Bluebird remarry? Was he too traumatized to consider a new mate, if there were new mates to be found? What did he make of his sad fate? Anthropomorphizing madly, as I unashamedly do, gave me a different kind of blues.

Fast forward three or four weeks. I awaken, put on my glasses, glance out the bedroom window and see...it can't be...three exquisite young bluebirds balancing precariously on the clothesline. With an adult male and female accompanying them. No idea how this came about or what the back story is, but here they are, and all week I've barely been able to do a thing besides watch—and rejoice in—baby bluebirds.

Extra Texture

The Larger Sanity

An example of what Gary Snyder might call "the larger sanity":

A man with vertigo scales the 52-story New York Times building without rope, harness, or parachute to make a statement about the urgency of global warming.

Thank you, Alain, for popping over from Paris to remind us of what we already know and aren't yet doing nearly enough about.

Alain Robert: The Solution is Simple

1

Global Swarming Honeybees turns 1 year old today. Thanks much for your visits, your comments, your support. Feel free to share article ideas, requests, resources, and desires for year 2.

In the meantime, let us meditate HARD upon the following—as if, like the Buddhists say, our heads were on fire:

"When you're walking down the street and see a little flower popping up through a crack in the sidewalk—are you going to root for the flower or the pavement?"

—eco-hero Mark Massara

"If you don't know how to fix it, stop breaking it!"

Eco-wisdom from the mouths of babes—Severn Suzuki speaks truth to power at the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment and Development.



Thanks to Eva for bringing this gem to my attention. Read more about Severn and her Skyfish Project.

Lynda Barry Rocks My World.

She has for years, and here's the latest—a cool new workbook on making art and hot-linking to the Muse: What It Is.

Biobigotry

What goes on in an individual's mind when confronted with a butterfly, a snake, a bat, a wolf, a pigeon, or a bee?

Natalie Angier has an illuminating piece in today's New York Times about "biobigotry"—"the persistent and often irrational desire to be surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other life forms that one finds offensive."The article describes the psychology behind this way of parsing the animal world, and points out some of the weird ironies that arise when we project our human morals, values and beliefs onto nature—often with only the vaguest sliver of actual understanding about what it is we're observing when we watch a butterfly, a snake, a bat, a wolf, a pigeon, or a bee in action.

If you've ever called pigeons "flying rats," disparaged a pig, attempted to eradicate a certain weed from your yard, or tried to chase the "wrong bird" from your birdfeeder (and who hasn't indulged in something along these lines?), you'll find Angier's piece a worthwhile read.

Spring Wanderings

Spring has definitely arrived in Upstate NY USDA Zone 4. There aren't enough exclamation points in all of human history to adequately punctuate my pleasure with this, my favorite time of year.

This weekend, I saw my first heron of the season, the first pair of goldfinches, and what appears to be a nesting pair of Canada geese down by the pond. The peewees and phoebes have arrived, as have the vireos. To our great joy, a handsome bluebird male appears to have selected one of our many bluebird houses to set up shop. The other 10 or 12 "bluebird houses" we've put up have already been taken up with swallows, who are a delight in their own right.

Over the weekend we saw bumblebees, cabbage white butterflies, and a butterfly we suspect was a comma (yes, there's a butterfly called "comma," along with one called the "question mark").

The honeybees were seen working the willow and gathering pollen from a blue hyacinth. Last fall we planted 100 or so Siberian squill, and they too have bloomed, though I haven't see any honeybee action there as yet. The dandelions have just begun to blossom, and I imagine much of the bees' focus is on that vitally important foraging plant.Speaking of dandelions, Wren and I enjoyed one of our annual spring rituals this weekend—foraging for tender dandelion leaves in the field, which we cooked up with olive oil, anchovy paste, onions, and pine nuts and tossed over pasta. Serious seasonal/local yum!

On my morning walk with the dog yesterday morning, I communed at woodland's edge with the aptly named spring beauties, one of my favorite spring ephemerals.
An additional sign that beekeeping season is officially upon us: I managed to acquire my first sting of '08 on Sunday afternoon while observing Hive Orange from what I thought was an appropriate distance. They weren't having it, though, and clocked me upside my head. It didn't hurt much. Must be the time of year.