For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on a paper exploring the question of “world” in Jacques Derrida’s reading of Martin Heidegger.  Given this, I had been toying with the idea of doing a post on the concept of “world,” but I was undecided.  Part of my indecision came from a kind of feeling of foolishness that, for me, always accompanies writing about concepts like “world.”  Everything in my philosophical training has led me to distrust absolutes, unities, and totalities, since they always seem to leave something out in a way that often goes violently awry.  Hence, I was sitting in my office one morning last week, feeling a little foolish, when out of the blue I opened my email to find this excellent post by Randy Honold that takes up several of the themes I had been thinking about.

Now, let me say right off that you should, at this very moment, stop reading this post and go read Randy’s.  No seriously.  It’s a beautiful piece, and you can always make your way back here when you are done.

While reading Randy’s post, I was struck by the fortuitousness of events.  What are the odds that I in my office and Randy on a plane back from India would each in our own way be struck by the strangeness of the notion of world?  Surely this is just a lucky accident, two events causally unconnected.  Yet this accident got me thinking about the way in which the real and perceived interconnectedness of objects and events is one of the most enticing aspects of a traditional notion of world.  Doesn’t this notion always play to our sense that lucky accidents might be less accidental than they first appear?

Despite the many problems that come along with the “one-world” or “whole-world” account of things, these notions do allow us to talk about the interrelatedness of objects.  The problem is that this kind of worldview tends, as Randy points out, to homogenize and reduce the relations between objects by privileging and universalizing one creature’s or people’s experience of the world as the experience of the “whole world.”  This is precisely the link in David Cosgrove’s work, for example, between the concept of the whole-earth and colonization.  Now surely we want to challenge this logic of homogenization and colonization.  However, one of the interesting questions posed by challenging the concept of world is how one accounts for the large-scale interconnectedness of objects without simply articulating them as existing in a unified, reductive, fishbowl-like container labeled “World?”  Lots of people have taken up this question, however, Randy makes reference in his post to the work of Tim Morton and particularly to his notion of hyperobjects.  I have quite a soft spot for Tim’s work, and I think his notion of hyperobjects helps us think about the experience of interconnectedness without unity.

Hyperobjects are, most basically, objects that are massively distributed in time and space.  They are things that exist or occur over such large areas or periods of time that one cannot experience them on a model of local occurrence.  For example, global climate change is a hyperobject, insofar as it defies any simple reduction to a localized event.  Snow in WashingtonD.C., 60 degree January days in Chicago, hurricanes, and violent weather patterns are all part of the object “global climate change,” even though any one of them in isolation might not appear as the expression of a general increase in global temperatures.  Thus, on a basic level, the notion of hyperobjects attempts to show that an object’s appearance to us is not the whole story or the whole object.  This notion extends the concept of experience to suggest that what I’m sensing “here and now” is not simply “here and now.”  Now this might seem rather obvious, but it is easy to overlook in Tim’s account the idea that this extension in time and space seen in hyperobjects is, in fact, a defining characteristic of all objects.

The coffee cup in front of me, certainly it is an object here on my desk, but it’s also a concrete manifestation of the collection of activities and forces that led to its being here.  The minerals from which it is made, the labor that extracted those minerals from the ground, the relations of trade which brought it to me, these are all contained in this object as it sits here innocently holding my coffee.  Just because I don’t see or hear the turning of a pottery-wheel or the flows of global capital every time I look at this cup, does not change the fact that this cup is fundamentally connected in its very appearance to these processes.  Hence, the notion of hyperobjects challenges us with the recognition that all objects are actually much less localized than our experience of them admits.  One way that Randy’s post got me thinking about this recognition is in terms of traveling, the fact that often the objects around us are much better traveled than we are.

It might seem like a rather foolish point to say that I’ve never been to China, India, or San Francisco while several objects on my desk have.  However, rethinking “the world” on some level must be an appeal to foolish points and happy accidents.  It is an attempt after all to rethink the everyday nature of the everyday and to see that it is less everyday than we thought. Challenging the notion of “the world” with a concept of hyperobjects certainly allows us to argue that cold temperatures and snow in D.C. are not “proof” that global climate change does not exist.  However, it points equally to the surprising fact my stapler is better traveled than I am.  This is perhaps what is glimpsed when we travel.  The inability to unconsciously fill in the back story of the objects around us exposes that we don’t actually know where they’ve been, a fact that makes their appearance to us strange.  It is perhaps the traveling nature of objects and their appearance that calls to be thought through?  Although whatever the case, I tend to agree with Randy that three weeks in India wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

How much did people go for my nerdy christmas list? I managed to get a few takers on the idea and received presents from 3 of the four categories on the list: professional memberships, coffee & grocery gift cards (thanks to the responsive crew of family & friends). Feedback to the idea was generally positive; I heard from people who had an easier time coming up with gift ideas, as well as those who were happy to receive gifts similar to what was on my list. There was also the usual support for the several-decade-old  Charlie Brown sentiment that gift-giving traditions should stop supporting commercialism, along with more contemporary concern about the way holiday gift-giving encourages environmentally unsustainable lifestyles.

Not all feedback agreed with my better-living-through-practical-gift-giving strategy; one nay-saying opinion felt my approach to gifts is too utilitarian and less fun or even less romantic (caution to the nearing Valentine’s shoppers); this view apprec

iates receiving the fun stuff as gifts because this way the holidays are more, um…fun.

I guess I see a six v. half dozen argument here because if my gifts spare me from having to spend my own discretionary income on groceries or professionally-related fees, I still end up with “fun” stuff in the long run (although I can still argue for the virtue of getting to pick out the fun stuff myself). In fact I have to confess: since the holidays I’ve found a thrift store in my neighborhood and what was the first thing I identified as worthy of my hard earned $7.50?

This time last year, Chicagoans were facing Snowageddon. Snow was falling and drifting at rates that the fleets of trucks couldn’t keep up with and forced a dramatic closing of Lake Shore Drive as well as many schools and businesses. This year, we’re not only lacking terrible snow related puns on the evening news but are dealing with an all around strangely mild winter. As a born and raised Chicagoan, I pride myself of winter toughness. This year’s minimal snow, that hasn’t hung around for too many days and relatively mild temperatures have made for a less than miserable winter. While those that loath winter and quite happy with this, I find myself facing a new type of seasonal anxiety. Not only does each day feel like spring is just around the corner (and therefore impending field work) but I can’t help but wonder what these mild temperatures and minimal snow mean for the ecology of the region.

For most ecologists and land managers, winters are an excellent opportunity to catch up on paperwork, data analysis, equipment maintenance and brush control. Meanwhile, the remaining months are jammed with prescribed fires, spot invasive control and vegetation monitoring.  Most of us view these “dormant” winter months as the time when most of the living creatures of the region are in a sort of suspended state, waiting for the thaw, moisture and sun of spring. However, it is important for all of us to remember how critical these winter months are, not only for our personal sanity (when else can you feel ok about spending a whole Saturday watching TV marathons?) but are also important and active time periods for nature.

Photo of my building’s alley “parking spaces” (can you find the car?) from February 2011. The lack of snow this year is definitely noticed, if not missed.

In fact, one of the most critical ecological processes, decomposition, though slower, continues throughout the winter. While most plants are dormant, the fall die back leaves a diverse buffet of organic material for the tiny critters of the soil to chomp upon. The winter months and associated snow cover are a busy time for these rodents, earthworms, microarthropods and of course bacteria and fungi. These soil dwelling critters physically and chemically digest this plant material (and often, each other) and return critical last year’s living things into next year’s nourishment soil (cue Circle of Life). The lack of freezing temperatures and snow this season are likely to have profound impacts on the rate of decomposition in our natural areas. Snow cover in particular has is important insulating properties. Snow has higher insulating properties than glass, concrete and most hardwood and is often important in maintaining warmer soil temperatures through the winter. These temperatures results in decomposition rates up to 10% greater than without snow cover (Bleak 1970). While 10% isn’t an impressively high number, it is significant for nutrient and organic matter turnover.

Decomposition is a vital ecological process that continues through the dead of winter, especially when there is snow to insulate the soil temperatures.

Beyond the implications for my favorite ecological process, snow and winter dormancy are important signals dictating phenology (anyone else have 2” daffodils that have been up for weeks) of a variety of organisms. Several insects, amphibians, reptiles and mammals burrow and take shelter underground and under snow packs, again taking advantage of snow’s insulation. While little is known about what milder winters might mean for the plants and animals in temperate regions, the potential for increased pathogens, mis-matched flowering and insect life stages and altered growth patterns are troublesome. All that being said, I think I’ll head outside and enjoy this 50 degree January day.

Here is a thought experiment inspired by post-structuralist political ecology, an engagement with affective neuroscience, and a notion of consciousness as a locus for political action.

Post-Structuralist Political Ecology—In this post I follow Arturo Escobar who focuses on discursive practices within the context of political ecology.  Escobar, like the poststructuralists from whom he draws inspiration (primarily Foucault and Deleuze), asserts that nature and society are social constructs, without denying that they also exist within a material realm (Escobar 326).  Similarly, while my experiment focuses on consciousness as a locus for political action, I do not mean to negate or even trivialize the material world.  My complaint is with an excessive emphasis on that world within political discourse.

Affective Neuroscience and Consciousness—Affective Neuroscience defines consciousness as a process which mediates external and internal realities for the purposes of survival broadly understood (Solms 18-30) .  Through affective modes we ascribe value to both external and internal realities in order to mediate our relationship to the environment and, indeed, our relationship to ourselves (Damasio 124-26).  Similarly we evaluate our own emotions as either indicators of our conscious relationships to things, or clues to our unconscious inner states, which include autonomic bodily states, as well as more classically unconscious motives (Panksepp 9, 51; Lane Being Aware).  This discursive practice couples values with emotions although most affective neuroscientists would concur that values also have cognitive elements (Lane “The Study of Emotion”).

Politics and Consciousness—In Power and Powerlessness John Gaventa cites “consciousness” and “the political will” as “elusive notions” recuperated as “observable processes” by communications theory (16).  As an expression of consciousness, politics can be understood as mastering and stewarding the worlds of our inner lives, in addition, or even more radically in contrast to, mastering or stewarding the natural world (as an outside).  Politics can refocus on “the polis” (the body of citizens) and the challenges of regulating human life.  Within this paradigm politics becomes a meta-process of human self-regulation, and specifically the regulation of our perceived needs.

What follows is a sketch of three perspectives on the environment: Modern, pseudo-sustainable, and conscious.  Within each rubric I briefly analyze the key value term “resources.”  In each case I also try to distinguish externalities from internalities in accordance with my stated bias.

The Old Modern—A traditional or “Modern” orientation to the environment focuses on creating economic wealth.  The environment exists for our benefit and all life forms are subordinated to human life to the point of degradation (Escobar 328, Fairbanks 79- 80).  This perspective, dominated by old-school economics, is currently characterized by factory farming, protracted colonial exploitation, and hostile foreign policies revolving around various types of resources.

In a traditional political environment, “resources” serve the exigencies of consumer capitalism (Escobar 336).  In the U.S. this view produced manifest destiny and political investments in natural resource conservation (Thiele 3-5).  More recently resources and biodiversity have been coupled with the biotech industry (Escobar 334-36).  In every case a resource is something to be found in nature as an outside.  Within this paradigm capitalist democracies are considered superior forms of government through the tautologies of consumer capitalism; our way of life is better because we can buy more things which we cherish above all else (Fairbanks 90-92).

The Pseudo-sustainable—The second perspective is a turn of the century approach I identify as conventional sustainability or pseudo-sustainability.  This viewpoint is largely defined by the Brundtland Report (1987) and the dream of reconciling capitalism with the environmental movement (Escobar 328).  Epistemologically, it is the “moment” in which Western society recognizes a set of emerging environmental crises—global warming for example—but is not yet willing to give up its attachments to free-market capitalism.  This liminal position is supported by a faith in the capacity of industrial capitalism to evolve and to solve global problems.  It remains invested in technological and economic development (Escobar 336, Sachs 434).  It is environmentally conscious but not radically so.  It still perceives an essential separation between human life and the environment as an outside (Escobar 331).  Although it may incorporate ideas of simplicity and alternative values, it does not engage in a serious critique of consumer capitalism (Sachs 429).

A pseudo-sustainable orientation constructs “resources” as an even more precious, even sacred, set of external objects.  The widely cited Brundtland report gestures toward a new age but does not threaten the old order (Escobar 332).  Conventional sustainability approaches focus on developing alternative energy sources rather than focusing on human consumption.  However, critics argue that in this realm we are counting chickens before they hatch (Trainer).  And we continually ignore sagacious warnings that we cannot solve global problems using the same technologies/epistemologies that created them.

A Consciousness Turn—A conscious turn is catalyzed by a realization that human behavior is the cause of environmental crisis.  It coincides with acceptance of anthropogenic climate change and a recognition of human responsibility.  Bruno Latour calls for a cast of “well articulated actors” participating in “a political ecology that will never again oblige them to become without debate, either objects belonging to nature or subjects belonging to society” (Latour in Keil 647).  Unless human beings take responsibly for their behaviors, they cannot cultivate or experience the will or believe that they are capable of changing themselves.  Though the media and various levels of government contribute to environmental crises, human behavior is the efficient cause (Fairbanks 90-91).  A conscious turn requires commitment from individuals and communities to sustain a high level of environmental consciousness as a form of moral consciousness.  Though this vision is surely idealistic, such an epistemic change is not beyond the arc of history:

Large-scale “changes of worldview” which are also changes of values, such as the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance or the acceptance of heliocentrism, are historically commonplace, and there is no reason to suppose that a change of worldview generally benefiting life on earth should not be just as possible. (Fairbanks 97)

One merely needs to broaden one’s perspective.

An internal, conscious response to the “resource” problem, a critical political approach, would focus on reexamining our own needs as individuals embedded with communities (Latour in Keil 647; Fairbanks 92).  Ethicists suggest that a radical re-evaluation of American habits of consumption and the use of consumer pressure could have a significant impact on both the economy and the environment (Fairbanks).  In line with this argument we could reclaim our national cultural resources of friendliness, honesty, and simplicity.  Indeed, any number of core American values could be mobilized to turn Americans from a nightmare of ecological degradation and socio-economic injustice toward a lucid ecological dream of reconciliation (Owen, Fairbanks 90).

Get Busy—Political sociologist and activist John Gaventa has illustrated that “participation itself [ . . .] increases political consciousness” (Gaventa 16).  Ethicist, Sandra Jane Fairbanks concurs.  One of her recommendations for developing environmental virtues in the American psyche is to encourage participation in local environmental initiatives (97- 98).  Fairbanks argues that, given the urgency of various environmental crises, we simply cannot wait for constituencies to develop virtues in an ad hoc manner.  She also suggests wide spread recognition of this urgency, in addition to “virtually instant communication” could facilitate a rapid change in worldview (Fairbanks 97).  In my view reclaiming political agency is inextricable tied with reclaiming a moral perspective, not as “church ladies” but as “ethical, good, right, honest, decent, proper, honorable, just, principled” human beings (your online thesaurus).

Works Cited

Damasio, Antonio R.  Descartes’ Error. New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994.

Escobar, Arturo. “Construction Nature: Elements for a Post-Structuralist Political Ecology.” Futures 28.4 (1996): 325-343.

Fairbanks, Sandra Jane. “Environmental Goodness and the Challenge of

American Culture.” Ethics & the Environment 15.2 (2010): 79-102.

Gaventa, John. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in                an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: U Illinois P, 1982.

Keil, Roger. “Progress Report—Urban Political Ecology.” Urban Geography, 26.7 (2005): 640-51.

Lane, Richard D. and David A. S. Garfield. “Becoming Aware of Feelings: Integration of Cognitive-Developmental, Neuroscientific, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives.” Neuro-psychoanlaysis. 7.1 (2005): 5-30.

Lane, Richard D., Lynn Nadel, John J. B. Allen, and Alfred W. Kazniak. “The Study of Emotion from the Perspective of Cognitive Neuroscience.” Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion. Ed. Richard D. Lane and Lynn Nadel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

Panksepp, Jaak.  Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions.  New York: Oxford UP, 1998.

Sachs, Wolfgang. “Deep Ecology and the Shadow of ‘Development’” Deep Ecology for the 21^st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism. Ed. George Sessions. Boston: Shambhala, 1995. 428-44.

Solms, Mark and Oliver Turnbull. The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the

Neuroscience of Subjective Experience. New York: Other Press, 2002.

Thiele, Leslie Paul. The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative. New York: Cambridge, 2006.

Trainer, Ted. Reviewable Energy Cannot Sustain A Consumer Society. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.

Image Sources:

1. Descartes’ Error: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/014303622X?is=l

2. Gro Harlem Brundtland: http://ekstranett.innovasjonnorge.no/Felles_fs/CVCTeamNorway/Bilder/Illustrations/Brundtland.jpg

3. Fractal Image/Indra’s Net: http://www.light-weaver.com/vortex/images/net.jpg

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die –

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of Air –

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise, and unbuild it again.

—from “The Cloud,” Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mention the word “cloud” nowadays, and many people will think of cloud computing.  But the relatively benign descendents of the poisonous hydrogen-helium clouds that roiled the earth’s early atmosphere still float above us except on boring blue-sky days.  Oops—a Chicagoan who thinks blue skies are dull?  Perhaps I protest too much, but that’s normal for a recent convert to the Cloud Appreciation Society (www.cloudappreciationsociety.org), founded by Gavin Pretor-Pinney in the UK in 2005.

True, winter months here in the Cloudy City are too often made dreary by the dreaded nimbostratus. This featureless entity seems to envelop us (its base, starting at 0-2 kilometers high, actually can envelop us, so that we breathe its dank air) like the Mushroom that Ate Chicago.  Fortunately, the nimbostratus has dozens of attractive relatives eager to take the heavenly stage.  Most of us turn a blind eye to this stage, yet its changing cast of characters is fascinating and diverse.

A cloud is a visible body of super-fine water droplets or ice particles suspended in the atmosphere.  But the different shapes and traits of clouds are so various that the three main classes—based on their preferred levels in the atmosphere, which determine their forms—are just a beginning.  Can you name them?  If you don’t ask me what I knew before I received my quarter-sized Cloud Appreciation Society pin, I won’t ask you again; but for the record they are cumulus or heap clouds, stratus or sheet clouds, and cirrus or fibrous clouds:

Cumulus Cloud

Stratus Cloud

Cirrus Cloud

The three chief cloud types break down further into ten genera, each of which has several species (see http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/collecting/about-cloud-classifications).  Some of the cloud species are rather subtle and only nebulously distinct from more familiar cloud forms, reminding us that clouds merge into each other with a fine disregard for human categories.  A few are spectacular and unique, such as the stratocumulus roll cloud known as “the Morning Glory.”  The Glory forms in the spring above the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland, Australia, where glider pilots surf it like a wave, sometimes with cloud lovers (fortified with Dramamine) in the passenger seat:

Morning Glory

My intermittent career as a cloud watcher began in grade school.  Occasionally, on fine summer afternoons in Ossining, New York, my friend Lee and I would climb a nearby grassy hill and—younger readers, hold your gasps of astonishment—do absolutely nothing.  That is, we’d do nothing recognizably valuable today.  For ten or fifteen minutes, we’d just lie on our backs on the clover and weeds, contemplating what I remember as a procession of billowy Conestoga wagons (clearly, in retrospect, cumulus clouds) floating across the sky.  That was one of my earliest introductions to the fact that everything in nature changes: all phenomena are time travelers, like human beings (as I learned considerably later), moving to mysterious destinations.

Fast forward to my most recent birthday, last September 4.  It was a breezy, cool, cloudy-bright end-of-summer day.  My wife and I went to the Magic Hedge near Montrose Harbor.  Predictably there were few winged migrants among the low trees and groves of goldenrod.  But the sky was a gift reminding me of Stephen Dedalus’s description, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of the Dublin sky circa 1898: “A day of dappled seaborne clouds.”  At about four p.m., Cumulus fractus swirled in the wind

Cumulus fractus

above a sun-flushed, chiaroscuro roll cloud extending from just inland over Montrose Beach and out over the lake. Volley ball players and waders were oblivious.  In fact, so was everybody, it seemed; I had my birthday present to myself.

You don’t need to wait until your birthday to revel, wandering lonely as a cloud, in a gorgeous sky.  Here in Chicago the New Year began with some sublime cloudscapes enhanced by the presence of a pearly, late-afternoon half moon, suspended in a low eastern quadrant of the firmament, which looked something like a cloud itself.

On January 3 a herd of hybrid clouds, Cumulonimbus incus mamma, hovered like celestial cows with swollen udders above DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus.  “Mamma,” from Latin, means udder, and designates the downward projections of certain species of cumulus clouds, especially those topped with platforms resembling anvils (incus).

Cumulonimbus incus mamma

Each lobe of a mamma is much larger than it appears to be—at one to two miles across, larger than the campus—and lasts about ten minutes.  This particular herd was overseen by high-flying, wavy Altocumulus undulatus resembling fish scales or, perhaps, the stripped skeleton of a gigantic fish.  By late afternoon the mammas had vanished.  The fish, or the remains of a school of fish, caught the sun’s last brilliance, sharing the sky with the early-rising half moon.

Altocumulus undulatus

Yes, my head was in the clouds on January 3.  They gave me esthetic pleasure and put me in touch, briefly, with what Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire calls “the real.”  Wherever we are, clouds connect us with nature—even with wilderness, given our happy lack of control over them.  And nature, as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.”

With interdisciplinary reflections on the book from Tom Simpson (McHenry Co Conservation District), Anthony Paul Smith (DePaul University Institute for Nature and Culture), Paul Gobster, USDA (Forest Service), David Wise (UIC), Clare Butterfield (Faith in Place), and Gavin Van Horn (Center for Humans and Nature) and from the co-author William Jordan III.

Broadcasting live with Ustream

AS17-148-22727. Not a catchy name, admittedly. But who isn’t familiar with the photograph it refers to?:

In 1994, geographer Denis Cosgrove wrote about the meaning of this image in his seminal essay, “Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs.” Cosgrove’s analysis and “22727” (the nickname we friends share) came to mind last month when this extraordinary scene presented itself to me from 39,000 feet above the southeast tip of Greenland:

I was on the way back home to Chicago from India, having had just co-led a three-week study of environmentalism there with a group of 20 undergraduates. This arresting landscape of glaciers and ice-covered mountains I photographed through the window of a 747 was ostensibly at odds with where I’d just been: the Western Ghats, Mumbai, and Delhi. But as Cosgrove argued, 22727 shows us that the “whole-earth” environmentalism and the “one-world” imperialism of our era are two sides of the same modernist coin. A commitment to modernist universality means nothing is – or ought to be – external to global systems such as climate, the economy, and politics. The irony is, of course, that no one actually sees the earth as the Apollo astronauts did, just as no one can experience global climatic changes, capital flows, or geopolitical power – at least not in the same ways we experience today’s weather, the dispensing of cash from the ATM, or drone attacks. These planet-wide objects (literary critic / philosopher Timothy Morton calls them “hyperobjects”) defy our ability to understand them from out of modernist stances.

I’ll get back to hyperobjects in future posts. In fact, I want to make my way back into to them by continuing the journey I’ve started down the scale from the extraplanetary (22727) to the tropospheric (Greenland). No short jaunt, this, and likely to be circuitous. Really, all want to do here is fill out three recurring and unoriginal intuitions I had about objects while photographing them in India.

We’re always outside objects.

We’re always inside objects.

We’re always next to objects.

These images are not meant to depict a hierarchy of objects nor do they exemplify the basic types of objects that comprise a complete set. They are simply (ha!) glimpses into a few places where we always already are.

I almost wrote “in relation to objects” to finish the sentence just above, but I’ve been weaning myself of this language as part of my experiment of living with objects. Heidegger taught me long ago that putting two mysterious things in relationship doesn’t make the things or the relationship any less mysterious; it only obfuscates the things and confuses what we mean by relation. It’s a hard lesson to remember, however, living in the City that Oprah Built. As my co-bloggers Rick, Anthony, and Christine wrote recently, thinking about objects raises serious questions: how we know them, whether or not we can touch them, who “I” am as a perceiver of them, if representations of objects are just as object-like as when they represent, do they have a moral valence, etc. I’ll defer (again!) the heavy philosophical lifting these concerns entail. Instead I want to think about my photographed objects in terms of the two most common student responses to their experience of India.

“I felt like time and space were distorted there; everything was unexpected and hard to get a hold of. It’s almost like the whole trip was a dream.” Don’t the best travel experiences do this to us? And don’t they – ideally – prompt us to pay closer attention to the people we’re with and the places we inhabit on a daily basis? Isn’t the quotidian right here just as mysterious, wobbly, and disorienting as anything halfway across the world? Do we really know our loved ones, friends, co-workers, and ourselves better over time? Or do all become more complex, nuanced, and multifaceted, therefore more obscure? Do we know what operations are going on behind the walls, just above the ceiling, or in the cracks of the floors of our homes? How much time would we need to know even the most miniscule place intimately?

“Getting on a plane and going through modern airports and a new subway all the way there, made the shock of finally experiencing India so much stronger when we finally got out onto the street.” What is it about placing yourself among strange new objects that’s so discombobulating? We see strange and new every day, don’t we? Does being agog give us privileged access to things? Or does the shock of the new cover over what’s more important to attend to? We knew that one-third of Indians live in poverty, that Hinduism accords respect to animals, and that infrastructure in Delhi is constantly under repair. Why did it shock us to have frail children beg for money, to step over sleeping dogs on the sidewalk and dodge fresh cow manure on the street, or to detour on and off the sidewalk five times in order to avoid stepping in holes – all in the 10-minute walk from the metro stop to the YMCA?

I reckon that my photographs/objects don’t scream, “INDIA!” But they do speak it softly, if “it” refers in some way to the range, scale, and complexity of objects there – or anywhere. The global and the local, the novel and the routine, converge in objects like highway billboards, public buildings, and tangled detritus. But in that convergence the mystery of objects is in no way revealed. The earth, the mountains in Greenland, the highway to Mumbai, a school rec room, and a jumble of trash underfoot, take our best modernist blows and don’t relent. Maybe it takes a few runs up and down the scale of objects to be reminded how humbling things can be. A few weeks in India doesn’t hurt either.

Last October I took the Amtrak to Bloomington-Normal.  The first amazing fact about that trip was that I had two separate reasons to be there on the same weekend: the Illinois Sustainable Universities and Colleges Symposium and parent’s weekend at Lincoln College.  There was much of interest in Normal, but that’s not quite my thesis.  My aim is to talk a little bit about the region to counteract the constant centripetal pull of the urban “center”. . .  just a little.

As I boarded the train in Union Station I was acutely aware of the fact that I had only been downstate on one previous occasion (in eleven years).  I still find it strange that many Chicagoans are far more likely to travel to Los Angeles or New York than Springfield or Normal.  And this isn’t just a function of cosmopolitanism and privilege.  Urban “creatives” on both coasts travel within their regions for business and pleasure by planes, trains, and automobiles.  Chicago may be more of an “urban funnel” than many other large U.S. cities.

The urban funnel model illustrates that cities draw all sorts of resources from their region to the detriment of outlying populations and ecosystems.  The human service demand of large urban centers strains regional ecoservices, and “extends the impact of human influence to remote ecosystems” (The Urban Funnel Model” 784).  For this reason I believe urban environmentalists are obliged to look beyond the city—not for “nature,” but for a broader ecological perspective.  http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~hsm/sust2008/readings/Grimm_Ecological_Foot_Print.pdf

Lack of local travel also impedes Chicagoan’s bioregional identity and obviously hurts local commerce.  No large-scale prairie restoration or urban farm can substitute for a direct experience of plains and farmland; a felt sense of place can only be gained by getting around the region.  And local commerce is certainly sustainable—as long as we apply fair trade principles at home.  That is to say, if urban dwellers strain regional resources they should at least be familiar with the region, populations, and resources on which they depend.

In that spirit, I offer a few more observations:

The Train. What’s not to love about regional train travel?  It’s logistically straightforward and pleasant.  For those accustomed to cramped airplanes, the amount of room in a business-class train seat is outrageous.  (Next time I will bring a pillow and blanket, having learned that the conductor will wake me up before my stop).  The choice is absolutely economical given the various externalized costs of fossil fuels.  But one doesn’t have to do that math or take a nap to appreciate the benefits.  The time savings and convenience are pay-back enough—ask any CPA working on the Metra train.

The State.  While Chicagoans generally believe their city-state is more powerful than the state-state, the State remains an important mechanism for economic and environmental policy making and implementation.  The state-sponsored Sustainable Universities and Colleges Symposium which I attended on the first day of my trip was rich, rewarding, and delicious (local food).  I met a delightful mix of urban and rural creatives from government, institutional, commercial, and not-for-profit organizations.  Kudos to our “very own” Barb Willard for bringing her students.  I learned about State programs in energy efficiency, green business development, and alternative energy.  Heartening too was the promotion of electric vehicles at the event.  Illinois is among the first states in the midwest to attract electric car inventory because of its infrastructure commitments, and Bloomington-Normal has been selected by Mitsubishi to become “EV town.”   http://www.cnt.org/news/2011/07/08/illinois-gov-quinn-to-sign-two-electric-vehicle-bills/ ;  http://www.evtown.org/

Yes, there was something comforting about being in Normal.  It relaxed my “urban creative” compulsion (at times neurosis) to be special.  However, the events of the day—the change from my routine perhaps—also foregrounded how much city dwellers conform to their own cultural norms.  In Chicago, everyone commutes downtown at the same time for much the same reason.  Like monoculture, we repeatedly stress the same systems at the same times.  Public transportation systems, for example, would be much more efficient if used throughout the day by various people for various purposes.

The People. The next day my husband and I visited our son at Lincoln College, about 30 miles south-west of Bloomington-Normal.  There we met a number of very interesting faculty members, and among them a kindred spirit.  Dr. G. Dennis Campbell is building an environmental center on college property.  There’s this creek not too far from the school that called out to him.  In 2006 one of Campbell’s freshman, Judd McCullum discovered  a mammoth tusk on a biology fieldtrip—one of the largest in North America.  Three months later Campbell found a molar.  I paused to reflect on my own field trips.  At the Field Museum’s Ancient Americas exhibit I regularly say something like . . .  “Wait, this is so cool.  The mammoths [in the animated diorama] are going to charge any minute now!” http://www.lincolncollege.edu/alumni/log/winter07.pdf

by Lauren Umek

As we enter a new year, and finally a true Chicago winter, we might reflect on our accomplishments and our goals. For those that read this blog, this might include something about the outdoors. Maybe you want to volunteer more, got for more walks, catch up on some ecological reading and if you’re like most people, burn some extra calories.  It wasn’t until this winter that I realized how much of an overlap there is between some of my accomplishments and goals for the new year.  In this post, I explore the similarities two major aspects of my life; my career as an ecologist (graduate student, occasional restoration volunteer) and my hobby as an amateur runner. The similarities between these groups are shocking to me and I compare their similarities of the following:  ritual, ecological awareness, gear and hardcoreness.

Ritual:

For many, Sunday mornings are dedicated to church, brunch and/or not leaving their PJs.  For both runners and restoration volunteers, Saturday mornings however, are reserved as the holy days for long runs and work days. These groups participate in their weekly ritual of choice that adhere and identify the group. On any given Saturday, hundreds of people gather along the lakefront path weekly long run from 6-26 miles. Some of them are part of an official running group, others are there on their own accord. Elsewhere, equal numbers of volunteers gather at various local forest preserves on Saturday mornings for a morning of buckthorn cutting, seed collecting, or plant monitoring.

The meeting locations for these two groups are similar: both prefer protected, public, natural spaces.  In the city, the gathering location is strikingly similar: Montrose Harbor.  Home to Montrose Beach, a rare and important natural plant community and magic hedge, a prime birding spot, Montrose attracts the nature lover year round.  Also near Montrose, meet several year-round running clubs. Taking advantage of the Chicago Park Districts well marked path, these groups meet for weekly essential long (5+miles) runs as part of their training. Though the two groups may never cross paths, they share a surprisingly common meeting time and location.

Habitat 2030 members bird watch at magic hedge near Montrose beach.

CARA Winter Half Marathon Training group gathers near Montrose harbor for a Saturday morning run.

Most rituals also include the consumption of a specific food type either during or to signal the conclusion of the ritual. Both runners and restoration volunteers also share a similarly unique food choice.  For runners, this “food” includes gooey packets of carbs and salts, often followed by a hearty, protein packed breakfast.  For volunteers, food choices are centered around a fire and almost always include s’mores as well as the occasional jiffy pop, or occasionally heartier selections  (depending upon the group).

Ecological awareness:

Almost by definition, but certainly by action, restoration and outdoor enthusiasts are aware of the ecological issues of the area. They are probably the most ecologically aware group. However, the runner, I argue is likely the second most type ecologically aware type of person. Runners, while not actively seeking to know what plants are in bloom, are intimately aware of minute biotic and abiotic changes of their surroundings. They know details about the weather and hourly forecast, and dress accordingly, often with great precision.  They are phonologically aware.  Allergy sufferers are intimately conscious of the time of year when the Alnus spp. and Pinus spp.  release their pollen in the spring.  In the summer, runners are also aware of temperature and humidity, if the grass has been recently cut, (again mostly affecting the allergy sufferers), or if it needs it desperately (making for an even more challenging climb up Cricket Hill). They also know when the Tilia americana is blooming, a mid-summer olfactory treat, and when the leaves begin to fall, covering cracks and holes in the path, creating a tripping hazard. In the winter, the follow forecasts, closely, and prepare clothing, footwear, stretching and nutrition accordingly. Sure, these thoughts (and direct knowledge of what species are responsible for the sneezes and smells) probably cross my mind more than your average Saturday morning runner, but even my nutritionist, artist, teacher, travel agent, and accountant running buddies point these things minute details about the nature around them on our Saturday morning ritual runs.

Gear:

Dressing for the weather, as insanely variable as it may be in Chicago, is a factor that all Chicagoans have to face, but non more than those who deliberately spend hours in the elements. As a result, both groups have potential to be serious gear nerds. As with all the above characteristics, I self identify with this title.  My Christmas list was dominated by special under shirts, socks, shoe attachments, and various body coverings to facilitate my activities outdoors. Runners and restorationists are gear nerds not necessarily because they are shopping enthusiasts (though I have to admit to being a bit guilty of this one), but because proper gear means for comfort and protection.

As a gear nerd, both groups are quite aware that this has been a relatively mild December, that the soil has not frozen, and that your favorite winter gear that has been pretty lonely and underused. While others don wool or down coats, fuzzy slippers and flannel PJs on weekends, you opt for well insulated and of course waterproof boots, quilted Carharts, lined leather gloves, a nice hat, maybe complete with a few singed holes from last winter’s brush fire. Or, you strategically layer your wicking cold gear with a mid and outer layer, compression tights and a wicking hat. You take pride in your gear. You swap stories and reviews of new purchases with your peers. Where did you get that wicking hatwith a high ponytail hole? Quilted carharts are on sale? You plan laundry loads around weekend activities and keep an eye out for sales. Being a gear nerd is critical, and it helps keep you hardcore.

Erin Faulkner, of Habitat 2030, cuts brush, an essential management practice, in a snow-covered woodland.

CARA Winter Half Marathon runners braving a slippery, snowy morning for an 8 mile run along the lakefront path.

Hardcoreness:

Both groups are hardcore and are also united with each other in their hardcoreness. Yes, hardcoreness is a mostly a made up word, but it is probably the best way to describe the drive, dedication and attitude of members of both running and restoration groups. They battle the freezing temperatures, snow, rain and ice all for a greater cause; spending time with like minded peers, who are also crazy enough to venture into the winter wilderness working towards a target race, or greater native biodiversity.

So as you think about your accomplishments for the year, and as you prepare to tackle your new resolutions, I invite you to reflect on overlap of these goals. Maybe there is a way to multi-task your way to success.  Perhaps I’ll start running with loppers and a hand saw next week.