Another instalment of Disney’s revisionist record (see previously here and here) and trying to prompt and preserve its wholesome image and promote its extensive and often problematic as worthy of our nostalgia wholesale comes to us courtesy of Hyperallergic in their staged series of nature documentaries with the particular cruelty of the Academy Award-winning White Wilderness, an exploration of our arctic animal friends that has been excised from available programming.
Though not the first time that the production company peddled a myth that was to awkward to otherwise own or disabuse, the film in question revived and reinforced the misconception that lemmings have the tendency to commit suicide en mass (the origins come from a pre-Enlightenment belief that the small hamster like rodents appeared during rain storms by spontaneous generation) by flinging the poor creatures rounded up and flung off cliffs at speed to portray this behaviour for entertainment value.
Saturday, 14 March 2020
white wilderness
Friday, 6 March 2020
subpar parks
Thursday, 5 March 2020
7x7
goetheanum: a visit to the seat of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach in the canton of Solothurn
0107 – b moll: a brilliant short by filmmaker Hiroshi Kondo on cityscapes, commutes and light—via Waxy
pivot point: we are entering the era of Peak Car—see also
gratuitous diacritics: a peek inside the world of extreme heavy metal logos—via Things Magazine
autoritatto: an artist commissions a neural network to generate her a self-portrait out of thousands of selfies
it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood: documenting the wildlife traffic over this log bridge in Pennsylvania enters its second year
Sunday, 2 February 2020
burolandschap
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ณ, sport and games
Thursday, 16 January 2020
wollemia nobilis
Via Super Punch, we learn about the clandestine, successful mission pulled off by botanists, park rangers, conservators and New South Wales’ brave firefighters to save the only known wild population of Wollemi pines.
The trees, which may be up to one hundred thousand years in age, number about two hundred individuals and prior to their discovery in 1994 (akin to finding a living dinosaur), were believed to be extinct and only known through the fossil record. The operation was kept secret so as to not disclose the grove’s location as caretakers fear that visitors could bring contamination that could harm the critically endangered species. Clones have been propagated worldwide and have distinct broad needles and knobbly bark.
Sunday, 12 January 2020
el bosque
We are presented with the verdant, vertical urban forest concept of the architectural firm of Stefano Boeri to be built in the near future on a tract of land just outside of Cancรบn that was formerly zoned for development as a sprawling shopping centre.
Happily the area will instead be home to new model city (see previously), one hundred and thirty thousand human residents cohabitating with some seven million carbon-sequestering plants. Project leaders plan for the settlement, campus to become a showcase hub of research and education with facilities focused on redressing coral reef degradation, lessening the impact of agriculture as well as demonstrating the integration of mobility, robotics and renewables into civil engineering and urban planning, backwards planning to bring these reforms and innovations to communities and infrastructure already extant. Much more to explore at the link up top.
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
palm house and parterre or bulletin of miscellaneous information

Sunday, 8 December 2019
9x9
ideograrch: the iconic works of architecture abstracted in Kanji-like calligraphy by Federico Babina
quasi-modo: a Russian DJ that combines his skill with bell-ringing with techno music
head in the clouds: a look at cities in the sky
dreigroschenoper: a gallery of playbills and references that cover the works of Bertolt Brecht—via Strange Company
pelagic zone: a deep sea explorer from Neal.fun (previously), via Kottke
fine html products: a survey of superlative links of the 2010s
apotropaic charms: stunning enamel pins from Lydia Daum, via Swiss Miss
you have the right to hush-up: Slaw & Order, courtesy the Art of Darkness
ๅฌ: Aoi Huber Kono’s 1972 picture haiku book Winter
Saturday, 16 November 2019
รฅrets ord
Collins Dictionary has unveiled, beating out other neologisms, most of which are main-streamed and in common-parlance to the point where they need no definition, that played heavily into our conscious these past months like deepfake, bopo (body-positive), influencer, cancel-culture, rewilding and non-binary, its selection for Word of the Year as Climate Strike, a sustaining and motivating bit of traction and Trost (though we have had quite enough of the solace of hope without action) in a world otherwise pummelled with anxiety and confusion.
Tuesday, 10 September 2019
5x5
barman: a historic archive of drinks recipes and other pub paraphernalia via Pasa Bon!
warp and weave: in her O.P.P. (Other People’s Photography) series Heather Oeklaus creates woven photo collages from vintage film stills, via Kottke
arboretum: an art collector (previously) plants trees in a football stadium in memoriam
on murder considered as one of the true fine arts: true crime superlatives from each state in America
via Coudal Partners’ Quick Links
central perk: the theme song from Friends performed in minor key
Wednesday, 31 July 2019
nacho typical arbour day
In light of Ethiopia’s big stride towards its goal of reforestation of four billion trees as part of a wider campaign and being cognisant that good efforts need some expertise to back them up, we appreciated this selection of products and projects from Futurekind, which included this sort of compostable chip-and-dip bowl for saplings called Cocoon, having taken part in many of these huge arboreal efforts, that helps boost survival rates by reducing the need for follow-up irrigation. Much more to explore at the links above.
Saturday, 6 July 2019
me + t
Having explored the proven and somewhat more esoteric ways that plants are networked and sustain one another in the past, we really appreciated Open Culture’s take on plant communications and how, if the titular character of Shel Silverstein’s story, had not been in isolation a You Gotta Be Kidding Me Tree would have intervened when the giving came to taking. See a suite of lessons on how trees talk to one another at the links above.
Friday, 5 July 2019
boreal
Though not totally out of the woods (like the paradox that holds one can only wander half way into the forest because after that point, one is on the way out), Swiss researchers bring the encouraging news that planting a trillion trees could reduce carbon dioxide levels by fully two-thirds, sequestering the green-houses gases that man has been flagrantly pumping into the atmosphere for the past quarter of a century.
That last third will be tough to eliminate but together with continuing emission reductions, dietary changes and advancing technology, the task at hand no longer seems as hopeless—the boost from the trees, according to new models, far greater than expected. Not only would the massive greening of the planet be logistically tenable and a bargain too great to pass up—at around thirty cents per sapling, it would cost all of three-hundred billion dollars—and despite the considerable space that this many extra trees would need to grow, continental America plus China, surveyors have found room at the borders and verges and in derelict land without taking any places used for growing crops and urban spaces—though more trees would dot pasture lands and be to the benefit of grazing livestock. Everyone can take part and aside from the intrinsic and aesthetic value of trees (helping to stop erosion, drought, flooding and preserve biodiversity), it’s moreover an intervention that is not predicated on convincing the nay-sayers and science-deniers otherwise.
Friday, 28 June 2019
buckeye state
Recommended by Digg, we really enjoyed reading this nuanced, thoughtful essay that explores the project to restore North America’s blighted chestnut forests (see also) by creating a genetic hybrid whose DNA contains material from wheat that makes it resistant to the fungus that wiped out the trees.
Given how some of our exuberance to adopt GMOs was misplaced—and conversely fears over it, it is especially vital to get the science right before releasing something synthetic into the wild as trees not thrive outside of our laboratories, fields and plantations, they are also a vital part of the landscape and ecosystem, host to their own particular constellations of Nature. What do you think? Testing is extensive and circumspect and well worth considering all the trials conducted and considered but one in particular stands out: tadpoles fed with either natural or transgenic chestnut leaf litter thrived equally well, but grew at nearly twice the rate of their siblings that had to make due with a diet of maple and beech leaves—their only option since the chestnuts disappeared a century ago, suggesting that the ecosystem is missing these magnificent and useful trees far more than we can appreciate.
Wednesday, 5 June 2019
↖ boulder brook trail
Friday, 24 May 2019
material and motif
The always brilliant Nag on the Lake introduces us to the repertoire of architect Bruce Alonzo Goff (*1904 - †1982) through his organic, harmonious commission for artists and educators Nancy and Eugene Bavinger completed in 1955 (making the cover of LIFE magazine due to its immediate status as a tourist attraction) in Norman, Oklahoma, far off the beaten path.
Set in the woods and using a re-purposed oil derrick drill stem as the central spire a single locally-sourced sandstone wall spiralled to the ground like a Möbius strip, the only division separating indoors from outdoors, rooms were suspended platforms at graduated heights with curtains that could be drawn for privacy and the ground floor was the forest itself. This icon of habitation integrated with its environment was sadly ultimately demolished in 2016 overgrown with vegetation and after a decade of vacancy and a tornado that damaged the structure’s anchor as plans for restoration were discussed. Other examples of works by Goff survive and enjoy protected status.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ช, ๐ณ, architecture
Wednesday, 22 May 2019
sacred grove
The once lushly forested landscape of Ethiopia that has been critically depleted from the start of the twentieth century onward is preserved in tens of thousands of tiny pocket parishes of the ancient and revered Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (แจแขแตแฎแตแซ : แฆแญแถแถแญแต : แฐแแแถ : แคแฐ : แญแญแตแฒแซแ), a congregation in communion with the Coptic tradition and representing some of the earliest Christians. Sacred buildings are traditionally surrounded by a thicket of trees and thus have become the foci of biodiversity for the land, with the belief that the trees prevented prayer from dissipating too quickly. Local priests are hoping to make their oases into something more contiguous and bring Nature back to Ethiopia. Learn more at Amusing Planet at the link above.
Tuesday, 7 May 2019
die unendliche anziehungskraft der natur
Inspired by a sketch executed in 1971 by fellow Austrian Max Peinter (*1937, a cousin of Ettore Sottsass) called “The Unending Attraction of Nature” art collector Klaus Littmann will bring the picture to life by transplanting a forest of trees in the sports stadium of the industrial city of Klagenfurt as public art installation of the same name.
Calling the government officials out for their inaction on climate change and habit loss (lifestyle choices do matter and have an impact but the real and difficult sacrifice is in legislating the polluters), Littmann fears that in the near future, such displays of Nature might in fact be within the purview of the viewing platform or gallery, like animals in zoos. They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. Once the project concludes (9 September – 27 October 2019), the trees will be given a permanent home at a nearby location on public lands.
catagories: ๐ฆ๐น, ๐ฑ, ๐ณ, libraries and museums
Monday, 6 May 2019
botantical mysogyny
Though admittedly a simplification of a host of factors and vectors coming together to exacerbate seasonal allergies and tree sex and gender are far more complex, we learn via the always excellent Kottke people experience outsized hay-fever and respiratory responses in part in America at least (and there’s surely counterpart problems created unintentionally elsewhere) because of a misguided appeal to urban planners decades ago to line the streets with greenery exclusively of the male variety, reasoning that then we could dispense with messy blossoms, fruits and pods that female tree would produce.
Not that trees were not incorporated into cities and sidewalks prior to the 1940s—but many of the stately, oldest residents had been blighted with the outbreak of Dutch Elm disease when production demands of World War II made the usual quarantine process that kept the pests at bay infected all American elms—and the reforestration effort was thought out along more deliberative but short-sighted lines, perhaps tidier and have a certain aesthetic like our ridiculous, manicured lawns but unbalanced with row upon row of bachelor trees spewing out too much pollen and making us noticeably suffer. What do you think? Sexism in the plant kingdom is not the same as the attitude that excludes women from medical studies and clinical trials as they are deemed unfit control subjects and most treatment and dosage comes from a pointedly male perspective but has consequence nonetheless. I wonder what the second- and third-tier effects are that we can’t even begin to appreciate.
Saturday, 30 March 2019
gewรถhnlicher spindelstrauch
There’s a rather unassuming shrub growing in the backyard with the scientific nomenclature Euonymus europaeus, the European Spindle that colourfully blooms with these clashing and poisonous pink and red flowers in early September that begin to bud (below) in April.
This small tree that inhabits the edge of forests and whose hard wood was the preferred material for making spindles for spinning wool and other implements. The infrequent surname Swindler, rather than the obvious connotation, derives from a northern dialectal variant for those who make spindles—the ‘sw’ transformation less taxing on the tongue than ‘sp.’