• Home
  • Blog
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • Publications
  • That 1st Novel
  • More!
  • Contact
AMY SMITH LINTON

Grasslands

6/18/2018

5 Comments

 
Chaumont BarrensThe Chaumont Barrens.
In my 20's, having successfully survived my scholarship-funded undergraduate career and embarked on my first couple of real jobs, I was excited to start giving back to the world.

I picked a couple of charitable operations that I thought would make an actual difference –– right away. 

The Nature Conservancy got the nod –– partly because of the romance of it: a bunch of business people taking a scientific approach to saving wild land and wild life –– and partly because I saw its work close to home.

The Chaumont Barrens, an eerie bit of landscape from my childhood, is currently stewarded and championed by The Nature Conservancy.

​We used to picnic there, little knowing that the weird rocks and odd plants were remnants from the time of the last ice age.
​

How the years do click by...My contributions aren't exactly princely, but I continue to fund the organizations I like. The Nature Conservancy rewards its donors with a newsletter, and I remember reading about the effort in 1989 to preserve a large tract of undeveloped tallgrass prairie in the middle of the country.
​
It was a huge project, involving local ranchers and a whole consortium of foundations and philanthropists.

The idea caught my imagination. I sent my modest donation and felt a sense of ownership when they bought the 29,000-acre Barnard Ranch, which has since become the 40,000-acre Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. 
Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
​Restoration biologists searched high and low for some of the nearly-extinct plant species, finding some forgotten in the unmowed corners of old country cemeteries. Locating a few patches of those 6-foot-tall grasses that used to stretch across 142 million square acres of the Great Plains. The mind boggles.

​I imagined the scientists gathering handfuls of seed heads and nursing them to germination with that single-minded fervor known to any gardener. 
Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
I kept sending my modest checks, noting with pleasure in 1993 when the first bison were reintroduced to the prairie. 300 of the large beasties were donated by a local rancher. 
Bison on Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
Imagine that –– bison roaming nearly free!

It was almost as if we didn't have to pave ALL of paradise and put up a parking lot.  

The herd has grown to around 2400 head of bison. Careful use of prescribed burns and herd management has meant that the prairie has continued to rebound, sheltering prairie chickens and bunches of the usual mammals in solid numbers.

So when Captain Winnebago and I realized that we were able to make The Big Park Trip, I put Pawhuska, Oklahoma (home to The Pioneer Woman's Mercantile. Go figure.) on the list.
Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
It's not the vast stretches of unspoiled wilderness that our pioneer forbearers found, but after three and a half hours of driving through the property –– it's a reminder of how great the Great Plains were.

And if anyone doubts that truth, go on and continue driving north to the Badlands.  
5 Comments

Thou Hast Missed a Spot, Minion.

6/14/2018

2 Comments

 
I spent my first years as an adult in Manhattan. This meant putting aside my hayseed discomfort with seething masses of humanity and suppressing a powerful native impulse to avoid conflict.

And –– the more important bit of immigrating to the Big City –– transforming my near-constant uneasiness (oh, call it fear!) into bravado and a solid grasp of the island's geography. The zeal of the new convert in action gave me a passionate opinion about Katz's deli, the Old Town vs. the Cedar Taverns, street dogs, knishes, the best route to the softball fields at the East River, and every other New York City thing.

I was a broke young creature with a super-cool job, and I knew that NYC was probably the best metropolis in the universe. I mean -- Korean salad bars open at 3 am? The Met? Central Park? Subways and monasteries and amazing retail? 
Picture
But then I went a little farther afield. Bella Roma!   

At seven in the morning, at least on this day, the Fountain of Trevi gets cleaned.  City of Rome workers sporting the ubiquitous Romulus-and-Remus-suckling-from-a-wolf logo drain the water, sweep the coins into buckets. (It goes to charity), and scrub away the algae. The square is empty, the gelatarias shuttered, just the one tourist in attendance.

New York has a sewer museum. New York has Broadway and a eye-popping number of celebrities-per-square yard of sidewalk.

But it lacks enormous classical statuary being scrubbed –– with typical Roman aplomb and nonchalance  (Tota va bene!) –– by a team of rubber-booted workers on a regular basis. 

Boom! Advantage Rome.
2 Comments

What's the name of that...Whatsit?

6/7/2018

0 Comments

 
Pariediolia is the name for the native human tendency to construct faces out of random patterns. Like Arcimaboldo's work, but by chance rather than art.

The word comes from the Greek for something like "wrong image."   Spotting the face of St. Lucia on your flatbread pizza  –– mental illness notwithstanding –– is bonus in our evolutionary heritage of pattern recognition.

It's related to the way that when confronted with a paper plate decorated with bull's eyes, a wee bitty baby serves up the same charming goo-goo eyes for the plate as he gives to actual human faces. Survival of the most charming.  

Which tells me that the point of imagination is to actually and genuinely save your life.
​
But what's it called when you spot horses everywhere?
Picture
The local osprey population LOVE using scraps of black polyethylene from construction sites for their own building projects. Naturally, it gets away from them. They don't use nearly enough fasteners. We end up picking a bale of this stuff off the lawn –– and out of the trees –– every January.
References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-check/201111/11-11-11-apophenia-and-the-meaning-life

​
http://www.slate.com/blogs/how_babies_work/2013/04/03/babies_and_the_new_science_of_facial_recognition.html
0 Comments

    About the Blog

    A lot of ground gets covered on this blog -- from sailboat racing to book suggestions to plain old piffle. 

    To narrow the focus, select one of the  Categories below.

    Follow

    Trying to keep track? Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or if you use an aggregator, click the RSS option below.

    RSS Feed

    Old school? Sign up for the newsletter and I'll shoot you a short e-mail when there's something new.

      Newsletter

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All
    Beauty Products
    Big Parks Trip
    Birds
    Boatbuilding
    Books
    Brains
    Contest & Prize
    Dogs
    Everglades Challenge
    Family Stories
    Farming
    Fashion
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fish
    Flowers
    Flying Scot Sailboat
    Food
    Genealogy
    Handwork
    Health
    History
    Horses
    I
    International Lightning Class
    Mechanical Toys
    Migraine
    Movie References
    Music
    Piffle
    Pigs And Pork
    Poems
    Sailboat Racing
    Sculpture
    Social Media
    Song
    Subconscious Messages And Dream
    Travel
    Wildlife
    Writing

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • Publications
  • That 1st Novel
  • More!
  • Contact