quercus

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation: Leave the Leaves!

Leaves are not litter

They're food and shelter for butterflies, beetles, bees, moths, and more. Tell friends and neighbors to just #leavetheleaves

Plenty of scholars have described nuts as a crucial food source for the Wabanaki people, and early colonial records indicate the same. In 1607, colonists from the Popham Colony described the Casco Bay islands as “overgrown with woods very thick as oaks, walnut, pine trees & many other things growing as sarsaparilla, hazle nuts & whorts in abundance.”

Ethnobotanist Nancy Asch Sidell documents that charred beechnut remains that are more than 5,000 years old have been discovered “preserved in a hearth feature” in central Maine. At the archaelogical site on the well-documented Norridgewock village on the Kennebec River – a Wabanaki town destroyed by the British in 1724 – researchers have recovered evidence of hazelnut and beechnut consumption, Sidell reports.

“The use and importance of nuts is as ancient as the people themselves,” Kavasch told me. “The trees they come from were so sacred and important. But many of our European ancestors couldn’t see the forest for the trees. They weren’t thinking of it as a nut forest.”

Wild Ones: Lifetime Honorary Director Lorrie Otto (1919-2010)

Institution: MIT

Lecturer: Julian Beinart

University Course Code: 4.241J

Subject: #architecture #urbanstudies #finearts #socialscience

Year: Spring 2013

Description: This course covers theories about the form that settlements should take and attempts a distinction between descriptive and normative theory by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. Case studies will highlight the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. Through examples and historical context, current issues of city form in relation to city-making, social structure, and physical design will also be discussed and analyzed.

Course materials can be found on the MIT OpenCourseWare website.

Source with pictures of example soft landing gardens, plant lists tailored to the North American Eastern Temperate Forests can be found:

https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com/softlandings.html

Oaks are universally the top keystone trees that support moths and butterflies. Across the United States, more than 940 types of caterpillars feed on oaks (Quercus).

Top genera: Oak, Willow, Cherry, Pines, Poplar

Lepidoptera in image: Great oak dagger moth, Luna moth, Red-banded hairstreak, Eastern buck moth

Many of the moths and butterflies that feed on oak trees must complete their life cycles in the duff and leaf litter (i.e., soft landings) near or beneath the tree, or below ground.

Lepidoptera in image: Blinded sphinx moth, Juvenal's duskywing, Hog moth

Creating soft landings under the dripline of oaks (as well as any other tree) invites all kinds of beneficial insects to complete their life cycles in your yard.

A number of beneficial insects such as fireflies, bumble bees, beetles, and lacewings need soft landings to survive.

Lepidoptera in image: Edwards hairstreak, Skiff moth, Pink-striped oakworm

Planting intentional soft landings under keystone trees builds healthy soil, provides food for songbirds and pollinators, sequesters more carbon than turf grass, and reduces time spent mowing.

Other ways to support insects that spend a phase of their life cycle beneath trees include eliminating landscape fabric and decreasing mowing to reduce soil compaction.

DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE THE LEAVES UNDER YOUR TREES!

Over the centuries, physicians have placed migraine in various positions along the mind / body spectrum. Headache experts currently consider migraine a somatic disorder rooted in the brain. But this is a break from the past. Up until thirty years ago, doctors primarily viewed migraine as having both a psychological and a somatic basis. In what follows, I trace these historical understandings of migraine from the nineteenth-century understanding of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectuals, to the influential concept of the “migraine personality” in mid-twentieth-century America, and finally to contemporary theories of comorbidity.

[...]

I pay close attention to how, at each historical turn, biomedical discourses come to enact and reinforce cultural narratives about gender, class, and pain via the encoded inclusion of moral character. After all, the credibility and the legitimacy of a disorder — and how much we, as a society, choose to invest in its treatment — is intimately tied to how we perceive the moral character of the patient.

Huffin' the flowers has been a huge stress relief here in the Southeastern USA Plains.

The shrub on the right is buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Flowers are: orange coneflower (Rudbeckia 'goldsturm'), sweet Joe-Pye (Eutrochium purpureum), anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), pokeberry (Phytolacca americana), and catmint (Nepeta × faassenii).

Closer to the ground there's: wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), three seeded mercury (Acalypha rhomboidea) and blue violets (Viola sororia). The empty space has wild stawberry (Fragaria virginiana) slowly creeping and a young little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

The image below shows the opening of the rain garden where the runoff enters. Plants are 4 - 5 inches max. Here there's: Virginia pepper (Lepidium virginicum), blue violet (Viola sororia), wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi), prostrate spurge? (Euphorbia sp.).

Also seen: white clover, creeping cinquefoil, and Bermuda grass.

In short, this is a proposal for an abolition of compulsory work for all beings. It involves rewilding at least 75% of the Earth with guidance from local and Indigenous communities, and ensuring that the remainder of the planet “abolish[es] the wage system, and live[s] in harmony with the Earth” as proposed by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (2021).

"Tarot & Acid Communism" Live at Tenderbooks in London

The launch party for 'The Philosopher's Tarot' at Tenderbooks in London on November 23, 2022.

Acid Horizon's first live event extends Mark Fisher's concept of 'acid communism' through prominent figures featured in the work of the podcast.

n her 2016 Edward W. Said lecture, Naomi Klein examines how Said's ideas of racial hierarchy, including Orientalism, have been the silent partners to climate change since the earliest days of the steam engine, continuing to present day decisions to let entire nations drown and others warm to lethal levels. The lecture looks at how Said’s bold universalist vision might form the basis for a response to climate change grounded in radical inclusion, belonging and restorative justice.

The Association of Space Explorers reached out to their fellow astronauts to pass on a simple message of solidarity, hope and collaboration to combat climate change and reach our political leaders during such a crucial time.