The cosmopolitan ecologist

A few months ago, I learned that a former schoolmate of mine was accused of something horrible, shocking. Without going into details, lets just say if he’s convicted of what he’s accused of, it would be the kind of crime that makes newspaper readers shake their head about the monster that could commit such acts. While I wasn’t extremely close to him, we did occasionally hang out, and even once went camping together. There’s something creepy about having been that close to a monster, the morbid fascination of driving by a car wreck.

Back then, would I have conceived of my schoolmate being capable of this? No, maybe capable of violence in a fit of rage (actually, certainly capable of that), but not capable of something so truly evil. There is a gap there, some indescribable mental leap between the sane and the not sane. The more I ponder that gap, the more confused I get. There is a trite saying that “there but for the grace of god go I”, but it is manifestly not true in this case- I don’t think even the most depraved version of myself conceivable would ever do something this monstrous.

I suppose the religious would call this evil, simply the work of a demon. I can’t quite believe that, and I keep trying to understand how such a thing could be, what chain of events could make a man so evil. One would like to think that my schoolmate that another choice than being a monster, that free will exists. But to believe that is to believe that any (admittedly violent) person can choose to do unspeakable evil, which is a bitter pill to swallow indeed.

Posted by ecologist at 03:44 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’m on a Virgin America plane, streaking west across the mountains of West Virginia. The mountains run in long, straight lines, spines protruding from the body of the Earth. The river valleys are clustered with roads and house, whose roofs shine brilliant in the summer sun.

For a landscape ecologist, this is an exciting vista. We spend our professional lives studying how landscape patterns- topography, rainfall, soils- have shaped ecological processes and human land-use. Yet rarely do we actually see the patterns with our own eyes. For the first Europeans creating this field, in a time without satellite images or aerial photographs, it must have been an act of faith, to believe that landscape patterns you could only dimly discern were scientifically important.

Now, of course, so much information is online that contemporary landscape ecologists see images and maps constantly. We have come to expect it. I was downright upset last night that it took me 10 minutes to find a free copy of the USGS topographic map for Santa Cruz Island, my ultimate destination today. Landscape ecologists and geographers now spend far more time communing with electrons from a monitor than they do walking the contours of the land.

That’s not to say all things are charted. Large parts of the developing world are not fully mapped, or contain significant data holes. Indeed, the seductive beauty of what is on the Internet can often blind us to the large gaps in our knowledge. Still, the fact that I can sit here, at 34,000 feet, and have a live Google Map feed of where I am, while listening to music by the Thievery Corporation, is rather incredible if you stop to think about it.

Posted by ecologist at 03:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As I’ve gotten to know my new home, one aspect of Washington, DC continues to amaze me. Everywhere you go, there is a TV playing a 24-hour news channel. Every cheap coffeeshop. Every swanky Georgetown bar. Every sweaty gym. You can even read political attitudes in the choice of channel. Places where lefty young folks hang out might play MSNBC. Industry types will go to a steakhouse playing Fox News. In this city, CNN is now the safe middle ground.

You could try to justify this news obsession by arguing that many new area residents are deeply affected by political decisions, and so need to follow it closely. And you’d be partially right. Still, it has far exceeded that need, into a sort of civic narcissism. I recently was sitting in a café and saw part of my neighborhood underwater, a CNN news helicopter circling overhead. How absurd to only know my neighborhood was flooding because I saw it on TV. When I voted in the general election, a news helicopter filmed the lines waiting to cast their ballot. When I biked to the inauguration, a reporter tried to interview me about the experience.

It reminds me Baudrillard idea’s about self-referential images, about the image of reality replacing the reality. Residents of the nation’s capitol get a secret joy in knowing that important thing are happening in geographic proximity, and so we overindulge in the news, even when we are far removed socially from the news-makers. To put it another way, I know Al Gore’s testimony was before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but I still don’t know the name of my next door neighbor.

Posted by ecologist at 04:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Well, it’s six months now after my move to Washington, and the nation’s capitol is still a beautiful and exciting place. I’m enjoying my job, and am happy I moved. Still, there are a few things I really miss about Cambridge, MA, and New England.

It’s not so much people I miss (although I do miss my friends still up there), but rather the city itself, it’s winding streets that connect squares that are never really square. I miss the fact that there was a Bow Street, and that it intersected Arrow Street. Each square was its own little cultural world, and every street has old buildings that had crumbled somewhat and been chaotically repaired. Despite the overwhelming pompousness of the place, it has a certain grace and a sense of history. Of all the large American cities, it is the least American and the most European in its scale and design.

I miss also real coffeeshops, little holes in the wall places where the owner if usually working. 1369, Café Pampolona, Café Rustica, Café Algiers… I’m convinced there’s something about having old buildings that encourages quirky new business to form. There were always small places to rent in Boston, and the architecture encourages the quirky. DC, in contrast, has gigantic buildings that are mostly new, and the available retail space is carved into huge tracts. The only thing that really survives in such a retail market are chains: Starbucks and all the rest. This makes DC a place where it’s surprisingly hard to get a good coffee, with the exceptions of a few neighborhoods that were built more than 50 years ago. So, advice to all the folks doing smart urban growth in the DC area (and there are a lot of them)- you’ll get cooler stores when you change your zoning codes to allow little stores down allies and in basements.

Posted by ecologist at 04:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Each person in Washington this Inauguration weekend had their own singular moment, when one fully realized how historic the event was. For many people it may have been the moment where Barack Obama stood on the west steps of the Capitol and took the oath. For me, for personal reasons the moment was during Sunday’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial, when some musicians covered Sam Cooke’s famous song, “A Change is Gonna Come”.

I suspect the organizers of the event meant this as a not-so-subtle play on one of Barack Obama’s campaign slogans, as well as symbolically linking Barack Obama’s achievement with the broader civil rights struggle. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, gave his famous speech from the very same steps where the musicians were performing. For me, though, there was another more personal relationship with the song, perhaps less important than the implications for African-Americans but for me more resonant. The first song at my wife and I’s wedding was another cover of the same song, by Otis Redding. We picked the song because for us we knew personal change was coming- marriage and adulthood and perhaps children. But there also was apolitical meaning, for we met at a protest against the Iraq War, and we hoped change would come politically to America as well.

And so there was something personally fulfilling about hearing that song played. We are older now, and were at the concert with our son. We have recently moved to DC, and suddenly the political tone of the place has changed. And possibly the Iraq War, which has hovered over our relationship since its inception, will begin to draw to a close. Hearing the song made me realize how interesting it is to be alive right now. It’s been a long time coming.

Posted by ecologist at 10:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For all of the excitement of Mr. Obama’s victory, and all the rhetoric about change coming to the Capital, I remain skeptical. I’m not skeptical about Mr. Obama’s motives- I shore many of his stated goals- but rather that anything will get done about them. Washington remains the place many dreams go to die. Thousands of people here are dedicated to advancing an idea that they believe in their hearts to be right (there are few cartoon villains here, the kind who intentionally do something evil), and yet most of those ideas never advance, never amount to anything.

I’m not so much interested in why a good idea dies (partisan gridlock, etc.), nor what separates a good idea from the bad, but simply how one intellectually works in such an environment of uncertainty. The battle of ideas in all domains is uncertain- that’s why it’s a battle rather than a charade. It’s just that in academia it is fairly certain that if one works hard in a narrow, somewhat pedantic domain, one will be remembered as the best in the world at that little thing. There are indeed gradients in fame and status, but there is something reassuringly permanent about an academic paper with your name on top.

Politics in contrast is a game where most contestants’ ideas are losers, never to be enacted. Most of the idealists in DC (and I count myself in their number) will do nothing, simply because so many ideas (good and bad) die. To survive intellectually thus seems to require an intense attachment to a core set of ideas as morally right, a great dose of pragmatism to seize any opportunities that may arise to advance your idea, and a faith that somehow your actions will help your idea survive after you, whether commemorated by history or not.

I have begun to ask myself every day if my actions will help make my son’s world more verdant and peaceful and beautiful, with patches of wild nature left. Any day I can say yes is a good day, for I’ve helped the idea of conservation propagate a bit more.

Posted by ecologist at 07:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For the first time in my life, I saw strangers spontaneously hugging, and it brought to mind old photographs of Times Square after the end of the Second World War, sailors kissing unknown women in the street. It was that kind of feeling in Bethesda this morning, except it was all African-Americans, greeting each other with cheers and hugs. I flashed a thumbs-up sign to one young supporter of Obama and got a big smile. My Congressman was at the escalator to the metro, shaking hands and celebrating his recent victory. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting in its patriotism, but diverse, an urban spectacle.

I had some writing to do for work this morning, so I stopped midway through my subway commute and came to Lafayette Park, with a view from a bench out on to the White House. It is quiet here, and the view is obscured chain link fences and construction materials, as the city prepares for the inauguration. A massive flock of starlings swirl around my feet, begging for food.

I know enough of politics to know that now comes the hard part for Mr. Obama, for the realities of governing often shatter the best-intentioned rhetoric. I know I will probably disagree about lots of issues with Mr. Obama over the next 4 years. And yet, from my perspective from this bench, as a new father myself, and as a citizen with a new president, Washington looks a bit different.

Posted by ecologist at 09:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’m beginning to surface from the haze of the first few days of my baby’s existence. It has been a wondrously odd few days. I’ve felt intense joy at my baby’s first real soiled diaper, dripping with odd fluorescent yellow poop. I continue to replay in my mind cutting his umbilical cord, that symbolic and actual link to uterine life, in a splash of blood. I am thoroughly sleep deprived from tasks that are not yet rote, which still seem new and exciting. Although most things in life have changed, some have not, old habits refracted through the watery lends of my current ocean of responsibility.

As a blogger, I’m having trouble describing my new fatherhood in words. How does one capture the joy of your baby’s crooked smile, which may or may not just be from gas? How does one describe the nice (rather rate) moments when he actually looks at me and connects? I don’t have the skill as a writer to put these powerful emotions into words.

What’s worse, everything I can think of to say is a recycled version of a trite phrase. “Your whole life will change.” Well, that piece of advice was true, but doesn’t come close to describing how my life changed, the fabric of my life weaving into a different pattern. “You will see life differently.” That’s true as well, but how could I communicate it in a way that is not deathly boring? Even if every single cliché told about parenthood contains a germ of truth, writers are loathe to use them.

Beyond a writer’s drive for originality, there’s another reason clichés are problematic. They have lost, through their repetition, any emotional force. They can’t communicate the real power of the experience. By chance, most of my friends haven’t yet had kids, so throwing these clicks at them fails to transmit the passion of the experience.

This has led to greater disillusionment in the power of language. Maybe no writer could describe making love adequately enough to convey the essence of it to a virgin. Maybe the heart of religious experience cannot be put into words that make any sense to those without faith. I feel like the intense personal experience of fatherhood is its own domain, not visible from outside.

Maybe Washington’s political obsession is also fatally flawed because of the limits of language. No matter how thorough the political reporting, the public only gets a set of words, not necessarily a clear and true picture of a candidate’s character. For all I have read about McCain (the maverick) or Obama (the young idealistic reformer), I know very little about the soul of either man.

So far, I myself am falling back on a cliché: “Words cannot describe.” For now, the experience of fatherhood is too tender and new to put into prose.

Posted by ecologist at 08:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)