Song Inspires Nostalgia for Anthropology
A contemporary song reminds me of all that inspired me to become an anthropologist eons ago….
Website for Ajamvari Farm
I finally finished the website for Ajamvari Farm, a family run permaculture project in Nepal that hosts volunteers. I helped develop the farm fifteen-some years ago while living in Nepal and discovered a passion for growing food that still runs strong today. The website provides information on opportunities for homestays and volunteering at the farm [...]
Common Indian Toad: Species of the Week
The garden is in now, so it’s time to get back to working on my ethnographic memoir on living as a family member and anthropologist in Nepal. I’m currently revising the chapter where I describe an encounter with an enormous hibernating toad. My six-year old son and his Nepali uncle and cousin almost hoed it in half as they weeded around a lemon tree. My son called me from my academic writing to see it. I picked the sluggish toad out of its burrow and prodded it to hop off to a safer spot. Then I decided to pitch in to help prepare a vegetable garden and discovered a passion for growing food (and a lack of passion for academia) that continues to this day.
White-Rumped Vulture: Species of the Week
About a month ago, I wrote a post on California condors, birds that had been haunting my imagination for some time. While browsing information for that post, I learned about the plight of carrion-eaters once common in the plains of Nepal, Pakistan, and India.
I lived in the plains of Nepal for three years in the late 80s and early 90s and also traveled through India during that time. I remember seeing parakeets, egrets, mynahs, and many colorful songbirds. But even though I must have passed by them hundreds of times, I don’t remember seeing Gyps bengalensis, the White-Rumped Vulture (also referred to as the Oriential White-Backed Vulture). Nor do I remember associated species, such as G.indicus (Long-billed vulture) or G.tenuirostris (Tender-billed Vulture). And they were all probably abundant….
Questions About Anthropology
I didn’t have a lot of time today to respond to the “instead of …” prompt at Read Write Poem or the “Poem Title” prompt at Poetic Asides. I’m tearing down and rebuliding the farm chapter in my ethnographic memoir on Nepal and also, coincidentally, designing a website for the farm I worked on. Trying [...]
Protected: Dissection or Poetry
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Nature Writing
I’ve published (or will soon have published) six pieces over the last year of full-time writing, but the lyric essay – “A Nature Lover’s Phobia” – posted online in Fringe Magazine: The Environment Issue yesterday makes me particularly happy. I have wanted to be a nature writer since childhood. I thought becoming a zoologist would [...]
