“Kick Off Your Summer of Cosmic Sunsets”

This segment on NPR by blogger and astrophysicist Adam Frank expresses much of what The Very Rich Hours is all about. Thanks to Aime Ballard-Wood for letting me know about this wonderful story.

Remnant Habitat in a Graveyard

NPR’s Morning Edition on Tuesday aired a story about wildlife biologists and other researchers in the Midwest exploring cemeteries, some with acreage that’s remained undisturbed for centuries, to find and study native species of plant and animal life that have otherwise disappeared. (“Scientists Stalk Cemeteries for Signs of Wildlife.”) One researcher says, “The future of conservation is in fragments” – meaning fragments of territory, which the story refers to as “habitat remnants.”

Although my interest isn’t scientific, I’ve long been drawn to these kinds, or other, similar kinds, of places – vacant lots, forgotten borderlands between developed areas, vestiges of natural landscape on the verge of being bulldozed, wild margins of tamed tracts. I can’t say when this attraction started, because it goes back as far as I can remember.

To me these little pockets of nature are as noble and as vital as any national park or monument. In dwelling on them (or, at my current location, in them), I’ve realized something further. All habitat is a remnant, and has been from the start. All territory is marginal, just as all time is limited.

In fact the first name for this website, in the idea stages, was “Marginal Existence” – except ultimately I felt people would have to work too hard to figure out how I mean this. Every place is fragmentary, and every second is fleeting – but they also live forever. Any experience in time and space – ‘moment’ and ‘horizon’ – is both marginal and eternal. How fitting to look for life in the graveyard. 

Sunset, Thursday, 4 February 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Thanks to Ethel Cole for the word of the day (at least).

“So,” Ethel says to me, “are you ready for the snowpocalypse?” 

If you saw how revved-up folks in this area get over a predicted big storm – if you spent five minutes in a grocery store on a day like today – you’d know how truly perfect Ethel’s word is. 

Of course, this one may really be snowpocalyptic. And yes, Ethel, I believe this time we are ready. I hope this time I won’t be telling sad tales of having to walk four miles up a major highway for supplies.

The sun was a whitish moon-like blur in a gradually lowering sky, approaching sunset. 

Meanwhile, and speaking of wintry sunsets, NPR reported the following today on Morning Edition. I don’t quite understand where the webcam was located, from this story, but here’s the whole thing:

A man lost on the ice of Germany’s North Sea was saved by two cameras and a keen-eyed woman hundreds of miles away. The man had trekked onto pack ice to take photos of [the] sunset. He became disoriented and couldn’t find the shore, so he signaled for help by flashing his camera. The woman who spotted him was taking in that same sunset on a webcam from the comfort of her home. She alerted police near where he was and they guided him to safety.

Evidently, we sunset watchers also watch out for each other.