On an evening walk, I saw berries on the pavement. I looked up and saw more on drooping leaves of a manzanita tree. I picked up two from the pavement.
Manzanita Berries
Category: Place in the World
Open Letter to Sony and Guerrilla Games
Thank you for Horizon Zero Dawn. The game was important for me personally. The story’s science fiction was astounding; Aloy is complex, heartful, and a powerful lead.
I eagerly await Forbidden West. Now that the secret behind the first game has been revealed, I think that it would be in Sony’s benefit to acknowledge the story’s debt to Native communities in America.
The dress, the face paint, the ceremonies, the weapons, the religions, the communities all reference Native peoples in the Americas. Also, the land in the first game, from Utah through Colorado, is a part of the sacred land of many peoples. While Horizon is a computer generated artifact, its land is a facsimile of Native land.
I bring this request to you because Native communities, like many across the United States, are suffering during the pandemic. A similar pandemic led to societal break down in Zero Dawn. This is the time for companies who have vocalized a commitment to equality and inclusion, like yours, to provide some concrete steps to demonstrate this.
Reaching out to Native communities in the West would provide a great opportunity to acknowledge your game’s appreciation of their cultures and also lend support where requested as they manage this public health challenge.
Think and Feel
Social Force of K-Pop Fans
American Korean popular music (K-Pop) fans donate to social causes, hijack harmful hashtags on Twitter, and participate in volunteer work. With the internet, American K-Pop fans connect people to further social causes in America.
While K-Pop music is typically positive, and self-affirming, their stars had not talked politics as a rule. However, recently BTS “took a public stand, showing support toward the BLM civil rights movement and donating US$1 million to the cause.” Maybe American K-Pop fans are changing Korean stars relationship with the stardom and even their music?
So, these American fans start with their fandom, see a connection there, and then use that connection, apart from the music and messaging from the bands themselves, to be players on the American social and political scene. And they may even start to change K-pop itself. Fascinating.
Here is a radio show about K-Pop and this political moment.
Beans sprouts
There were some beans left over that didn’t get soaked overnight. We tossed some in a black plastic container with a six inch diameter and nine inches tall to see if they would grow. They persisted in its stubborn, alkaline soil and broke green shoots with delicate curves of leaves. With infrequent watering, they grew in the hot sun.
How did these leaves unfurl so quickly?
Bird Calls
- When I wake up, I hear the coos of a dove.
- When I sit outside in the late morning, I hear the platter of a hummingbird’s wings.
- When I take an afternoon walk, I hear the caws of a crow.
Are they singing louder? Or do we notice them now?
“Although our perception might be that they’re singing louder, it’s actually likely in places that are typically noisy that they’re singing more quietly than normal,” Zollinger said in an interview with Morning Edition. “But when the noise is gone, they’re probably singing quieter than they do normally.”
In other words, birds are like us: In a noisy bar, for example, people will raise their voices.
Do Those Birds Sound Louder To You? An Ornithologist Says You’re Just Hearing Things
Plant Adaptation
There is an eastern wall that shades the morning spring sunshine. Rose branches grow to the west to grasp more sunlight. So, their angle to the sun and their duration of direct sunlight increases. The branches that did not grow that way withered.
Hummingbirds Herald Spring
Peter Densmore, a park ranger who remains on the job at Bryce, now has a front row view of the natural phenomena that millions of tourists come to experience each year.
“We see our Utah prairie dogs beginning emerging in the park meadows, and we see the return of some of our seasonal bird species, especially Western bluebirds and American robins,” says Densmore, who is a visual information specialist for the park. “Mammals like mule deer and pronghorn, often overwinter at lower elevations … [and] usually start making their way up into the park about this time of year.”
Densmore says he is especially looking forward to the return of the hummingbirds.
“Once they’ve returned to the park, it’s safe to begin really celebrating spring and summertime,” he says.
From NPR
No Vacancy
In mid-March, a group of homeless and housing-insecure people calling themselves the Reclaimers took possession of eleven vacant houses in a quiet working-class neighborhood called El Sereno, east of downtown. The houses are among hundreds that Caltrans, the state’s transportation authority, bought last century, with the goal of demolishing them to make way for an expansion of the 710 Freeway. They were vacant—many of them unoccupied for years.
From the New Yorker
Give Back
National Emergency
With our bodies, we insulate others from virus for our common good.
If we do not direct our attention to insulate virus from others, the collective systems we rely on will collapse.
- Workers get sick. How will we continue the bare functions of the country?
- People without jobs get sick. How will they pay for necessities, like medical care?
- Incarcerated people get sick. How will they remain there?
- Homeless people will get sick. Will we let them die in the streets?
- Police get sick and their team will be quarantined. Who will protect us?
- Healthcare workers get sick. Who will serve the sick?