Tag: conservation

Puffins…

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It’s not always the obvious that is the source of danger for the birds. On Craigleith, famous for its puffin colony of ten thousand breeding pairs, the population of what is undeniably the cutest and most comedic of all seabirds fell in a few short years by 90 per cent because of tree mallows, giant invasive plants whose roots make it impossible for the birds to dig the burrows where they incubate their eggs and raise their young. Ever since the calamitous fall in numbers, volunteers have been working to eradicate the mallows. In spite of the efforts of more than a thousand supporters of the puffins, the mallows persist, though their numbers have been reduced sufficiently to allow the puffins to start rebuilding their colonies. They’re a welcome sight; it would be a hard heart that didn’t feel a rise in its spirit at the sight of a puffin.

— Val McDermid, Winter: The Story of a Season (Atlantic Monthly Press, December 30, 2025)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: Take 2

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So Stewart (Brand) gave birth to this idea that if we could show the world from the outside, if we realized what an amazing, extraordinary, unique gift that was — this tiny, little planet teeming with life, swimming around in a dead universe, as far as we know.

We still don’t know that there’s any other life in the universe, which is phenomenal, if you think about it. We still don’t know. We might be the only life in the universe. I think about that nearly every day. I think it’s the most sobering thought. I think that should be shouted from the rooftops every day.

That’s my version of seeing the whole Earth from space — getting people to understand that we might be the only life. It might all be on this one place, and bloody hell, shouldn’t we look after it a bit better, then?

Then those things make me constantly think and constantly be grateful for the fact that I’m alive. I remember reading this comment from a New York taxi driver. He’s driving, and he turns to the customer and says, “Oh, life. I’m so glad I got in.” [Laughs.]

I just love the idea that it’s like an amazing show at a theater and you managed to get a ticket to see it. I appreciate that kind of gratitude.

— Brian Eno interviewed by Ezra Klein, from “A Breath of Fresh Air with Brian Eno” (NY Times, October 3, 2025. The Ezra Klein Show)

Brian Eno Portrait by Shamil Tanna @ Pitchfork.com

T.G.I.F.: If the world were fair…

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If the world were fair, destruction and creation would take the same effort. It is far too easy to destroy something. A red strike through a sentence. A flame through a forest. A fist through a flower’s roots. What took life a hundred years to create could be felled in mere minutes.

— Katie Goh, Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange (Tin House Books, May 6, 2025)

Notes:

  • NPR Book Review (May 5, 2025): “Supermarket displays of oranges will never look the same after reading ‘Foreign Fruit'”
  • Chicago Review of Books (May 5, 2025): “Unpeeling the history of citrus”

Walking. Blue on Bone.

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High Tide. 100% overcast. Winds spitting rain. 45° F — wet, wet to the bone. DeLillo’s dusk, silence, iron chill.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone. – Don DeLillo, White Noise.

I stare at the photo. A sad looking street light slouches heavily downward, destroying the symmetry of the view. One sweep of the trackpad and Photoshop clears the way, leaving the foreground awash in its light. There, all better. Gone. No irony in that. No sirree. Street light straining to stand, its light straining to illuminate our way. Blue Blue Blue horizon.

I walk. 1,797 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

Continue reading “Walking. Blue on Bone.” →

Miracle, all of it.

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Next morning, as the fog lifts, I have the sense I often have here, of seeing the world at the moment it comes to life. I recall looking down at the twenty-five pods gathered around the bell tower and the refectory, tiny against the hillside and the huge expanse of sea beyond; they looked so frail I wished to say a prayer for them, as for a newborn in the not always easy world. So orderly, too, in their hopeful human arrangement. Like the redwoods in the valley beside them: each with roots five feet deep, but intertwined, so the health of one depends on the health of every other.

— Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning from Silence (Riverhead Books, January 14, 2025). Written from his cell at New Camaldoli Hermitage in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Big Sur, California.

Notes:

  • Other highlights from early in the book:
    • ““When I go out into the world,” volunteers one of the brothers, “I feel like a sea anemone…A little creature of the sea. You know how sensitive and tender they are. If they trust where they’ve been placed, they open up. Put them in a harsh environment and they close very quickly.”
    • Where are such people in my daily life? I wonder, back in my trailer. Everywhere, comes the answer, but I can’t see or stop to hear them. I’m too caught up in my own schedule, my seeming busyness. Like someone who plays the radio all the time and claims never to hear the sea.
    • Luxury indeed to follow whim; my conscious mind can argue me out of any belief and into it again. Pure joy to inhabit a world whose dictionary has no place for “worry” or for “strife.” I recall the day I flew across the ocean after hearing that my father was in the ICU; as I stepped into the small hospital room, I realized that my bank account, my resume, my business card would none of them be of very much help at all. The only thing that could sustain him—or me—would be whatever I’d gathered in stillness.
  • Review of Pico Iyer’s new book here: Pico Iyer Made His Name Traveling. Now He Explores Inner Landscapes. (NY Times, Jan 3 2025)
  • Photo: Vladimir Miranda, Cabo Mexico.
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”