Search results matching tags 'life', 'biology', and 'death'

An afternoon on the dredge spoils

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:10:00 GMT

It's silly season--a pope getting beatified, royalty getting married. We need costumes for these, lots of costumes. And music! And, oh, isn't it all so grand!

And under the Delaware Bay stir the ancient longings of ancient critters, crawling up from the cool, dark muck, to dance under the moon again, as they have for millions of years.

I spent the afternoon atop a mountain of dredge fill, surrounded by the skeletal remains of horseshoe crabs and scallops, fish and whelk. Tiny flies congregated in the cracks, worshiping the death that keeps them alive. A hawk hovered a hundred yards away, eying the last moments of its prey below.

In the garden sits a robin's egg, intact but fading under two weeks of sun. A few volunteer basil plants erupted a few feet away. Last year's Brussels sprouts are now a riotous yellow.

Each time I wander outside, I am reminded how the story ends, as I am reminded how the story starts, a story without fine linen or fine music, and a story without end.

Every day I share pieces of the story with my students, and every day it surprises them, as every day, it surprises me.

Photos by us, use them as you will. Another beautiful day.

Science snob

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 21:44:00 GMT

This one's for me. No need to read it, nothing to see. Move along, move along....

Everywhere plants
Flourish among graves,

Sinking their roots
In all the dynasties
Of the dead.

Seamus Heaney, from "A Herbal"

I believe, truly believe, that if you pay attention, real attention, to anything, you cannot help but be smitten by Seamus Heaney, soil, or horseshoe crabs.

Or smitten by any number of the seemingly infinite variety of life and circumstance around us.

So call me a snob. A science snob.

***

Yesterday I found two new "wasps" in my roly-poly terrarium. Then I stumbled upon Seamus Heaney's latest book, Human Chain, while warming up in the Montclair Book ~~Store~~ Center. I bought it.

Last night I saw Michael Franti. Hugged him, even. He reminds me why this human thing rocks.

Stared at morning glories at noon, flared open in the dying October light. Our brains tell us that daylight is daylight. The morning glories say otherwise.

Today I got to kick leaves with my toes on the Green.

I chatted with a new security guard at school--turns out I was her doc way back when when the big blue bus visited her neighborhood.

Then I learned that my black wasps were really harmless soldier flies--I got this from The Dirt on Soil, one of my favorite blogs.

All in 24 hours. None of this expected, none of it earned.

The soldier fly on the finger photo from Rock Hill High School, via The Dirt on Soil blog.
The morning glory is mine.

Leslie babysat Seamus' kids over 30 years ago.
Funny how that goes.

Our horseshoe crab trip

Anonymous — Sat, 22 May 2010 12:47:00 GMT

What did you imagine lies in wait anyway
at the end of a world whose sub-substance
is glaim, gleet, birdlime, slime, mucus, muck?

from Why regret?
Galway Kinnell

Yesterday we took over 160 high school students to Sandy Hook to see horseshoe crabs.

A few had never seen the ocean before.
A few dared let a fiddler crab tickle their palms.
A few touched a live striped bass, a yard long and just pulled from the ocean.
A few saw an osprey glide of the bay.
A few held comb jellies in a sea water puddle in their cupped hands.
One lost his flip flop to the muck.

I have no idea how much "biology" my lambs learn in the classroom. I suppose they learn as much as anyone else required to sit for the New Jersey EOC Biology Exam, and after 10 years of mandatory schooling, they're pretty good at taking tests about things they do not get (as no one does) to please folks they never met (as we all do).

I have no idea how to test what a child learns as his foot gets caught in the muck, a gray cloud now hiding his footprint, the sweet smell of life and death mingling in mud.

I do know this. The children were as alive as I have ever seen them. I suspect that many of them will carry vivid moments tucked between their amygdalas and their cortical gyri.

We are trained to keep the mulch and the muck hidden from the children, the classroom is safer (and much easier) that way. It was fun to teach real ~~biology~~ life for a day.

I bet even Arne might get it if he spent some time mucking around....

Yep, same photo--I love it. Look at the twists and turns, decisions made
by a chilled tiny horseshoe crab on a late February morning.