By Elizabeth Farnsworth
Seeds are the beginning of life for so many of the plants that give humanity life: the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat, the medicines that save us from disease. I am awed by all of nature, but nothing speaks to me of the miraculous so much as a seed.
By Henry Lappen
When I do my educational performance “A Passion for Birds,” I always ask the audience “What is a bird?” Depending on the age of the audience, I get quite a variety of answers. Someone usually starts with “It’s a flying animal.” I respond by pointing out, “Under that definition, bees and bats are birds.”
By Patrick O’Roark
Recently, Ted Watt, my colleague at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst, said something that really stuck with me: Naturalists, the experts on the plants and animals sharing the land with us, are important figures in the struggle to curb and adapt to climate change.
By Reeve Gutsell
July 12 marked the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau’s birth. Though not widely read in his day, this essayist, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, land surveyor and native son of Massachusetts is now well known throughout America and the rest of the world for his influence on both modern-day environmentalism and civil resistance movements.
By Katie Koerten
As an environmental educator at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment, I do most of my work outside. Until our recent move to our new “living” building I didn’t consider that our nature center itself could help me teach about the environment as well.
By David Spector
The ways birds use the sun, the stars, their own internal clocks, the Earth’s magnetic field, odors, and other cues to navigate are well documented. Birds can also help a human to know his or her location.
By Benjamin Weiner
At Ellis Island, years ago, I was struck by an exhibit listing some of the contributions made by immigrant languages to American English, though I realize now that at least two important Jewish offerings went unrecorded. The more colorful of my ancestors’ Yiddishisms were probably deemed unfit for inclusion in a family museum. But the other gift I’m thinking of, Hebraic, has more dignity and has more recently entered fully into the specialized vernacular of social activism.
By Sally Jewell Coxe
Do you know what a bonobo is? Have you ever seen one? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, you are an exception. Bonobos, closely related to chimpanzees, were the last great apes discovered by Western science, and still remain largely unknown to most of the world. Found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, bonobos inhabit the heart of the world’s second largest rainforest.
By Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Suppose you deeply loved this planet and were also deeply concerned for its future. And suppose you wanted to hold an event to give voice to those feelings. What would you call it?
By Elizabeth Farnsworth For the Gazette
Have you ever noticed a line of funnels dotting the sand at the base of your house, just inside the drip-line of your gutter or roof? Funnels about an inch across, and so regular that they could not possibly be due to raindrop drips?
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax