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EcoLit 313
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
Welcome to the on-line conversation for Ecological Imaginings, an English, Environmental Studies and Gender and Sexuality course @ Bryn Mawr College in which we are re-thinking the evolving nature of representation, with a focus on language as a link between natural and cultural ecosystems.
This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to. The first thing to keep in mind is that it's not a site for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts." It's a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Imagine that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking. The idea here is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours.
Who are you writing for? Primarily for yourself, and for others in our course. But also for the world. This is a "public" forum, so people anywhere on the web might look in. You're writing for yourself, for others in the class, AND for others you might or might not know. So, your thoughts in progress can contribute to the thoughts in progress of LOTS of people. The web is giving increasing reality to the idea that there can actually evolve a world community, and you're part of helping to bring that about. We're glad to have you along, and hope you come to both enjoy and value our shared explorations. Feel free to comment on any post below, or to POST YOUR THOUGHTS HERE.
![Nan's picture Nan's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-1129.jpg)
Doubletake / The Garden 5
I felt the presence of something numinous in the garden as I opened the door and stepped out.
There was a rustle in the brush of something just disappearing on the periphery.
And then I saw the deer, a female, quiet, unafraid.
She slowly walked out of the garden and behind the house.
There was a rustle in the foliage right under my feet where I had noticed only dead leaves, golden and brown and still damp from the night's rain.
A rabbit in its Fall coat, blending with the foliage, skittered off.
And then I saw her, not too far away and not too near, so wondrous on her four paws and her tawny fur –-
a lioness right there in my garden!
But I saw right away that one of her eyes was bloodied and bruised.
And standing right next to her was a small boy, unknown to me, repeatedly hitting her in the eye with a club.
I became suddenly anxious, my mood shifted.
And I worried that the lioness would tire of her own patience and turn on the child and attack him.
But the lioness refused to use her power against the child.
And I stood in awe trying to decide what to do.
What would you do?
![Smacholdt's picture Smacholdt's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-783.jpg)
Where Have all the Flowers Gone?
I’m finding it a little hard to concentrate this morning because they MOWED my spot. Mowed it! All the wildflowers (and all plants, minus the trees) are shorn to the ground. Devastation! I’m exaggerating, but it was slightly shocking after watching the spot grow for half the semester. It must have been mown yesterday with the rest of campus. Why do grounds mow campus so often?
I usually try to incorporate the readings, or whatever we talked about in class last time in my posting, but I’m finding it a little hard to do so today. I felt frustrated through much of class yesterday both because, though I could see the connections, I felt that feminism and environmentalism were very separate. I’ve always had trouble with both ideas, maybe just because they’re so expansive. I think that “environmental justice” is a clearer descriptor than “eco-feminism.”
But back to my site sit, since I was at a loss for words today I decided to represent my experience pictorially. Above are before and after pictures of my site, and below is a previous description of my site sit after I ran it through Wordle.com, which “reformatted” it.
![ekthorp's picture ekthorp's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-866.jpg)
Good Morning!
Last class, when Anne suggested that we maybe move our weekly sitting spot, I was strck distraught by this prospect. I like my spot. I've grown attached to my spot. I feel like there's so much left to do and explore there. I've come to feel comfortably alone and have even fallen asleep there a couple times. In order to increase my exposure to it, just to make sure it's the place I really want to be, I though it'd be cool to visit it at a very different time of the day. I really wanted to see how sitting there at sunrise would effect my vision of the spot. So this morning, just past 7 am, i trudged myself over to the pond in order to have a look-see at the spot I've visited on the same day at the same time for the past 6 weeks. I took a couple pictures, but they're all pretty lame and dark, or I would show them to you. What I think is more revealing is what I wrote while lying there.
Sunrise Reflections
![ekthorp's picture ekthorp's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-866.jpg)
Relevant Poem
Today in class (out of class?) I was excited to see how enraptured we became in our discussion of eco-feminism. I wanted to respond to it some way, and poetry usually is the best wasy I can see to do that. Often another poet voices the exact thoughts that should come to my mind. I thought this one poem was highly relevant to our discussion and notions of overturning systems of patriarchal oppression and turning it into something useful. So I thought I'd share it.
VI
Let the old man lie in the earth
(he has troubled men's thought long enough)
let the old man die,
let the old man be of the earth
he is earth,
Father,
O beloved
you are the earth
he is the earth, Saturn, wisdom,
rock, (O his bones are hard, he is strong, that old man)
let him create a new earth,
and from the rocks of this re-birth
the whole word
must suffer
only we
who are free,
may foretell,
may prophesy,
he,
(it is he the old man
who will bring a new world to birth)
it is he,
it is he
who already has formed a new earth.
~H.D. "The Master"
![rachelr's picture rachelr's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-696.jpg)
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower"
Today I collected leaves. Now I have autumn in my room.
Most adventurous site sit. Didn't stay in one place. Trees around me aren't very diverse, I wanted more different leaves. You can't always get what you want.
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
Time Matters (Week Five)
"There is no time" (Rachel Carson)
Time was short.
(I didn't "leave" myself enough of it.)
Time was long.
(I counted the rings on fallen trees.
150 years apiece.)
The stones in the graveyard evolved.
From Wissahickon Schist (surely?) to marble (really?).
How long will that last?
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
finding a thread....
By Sunday @ 5: initiate, or choose a "thread" to follow w/ your classmates: How might we revise the remainder of the semester to reflect our shared interests? How do you understand/what questions do you have about the intersection of gender and the environment? (Or: what questions did Spretnak's article on ecofeminism answer or raise for you?) And/or what further conversation would you like to have about our other recent, under-discussed readings (Pollan on weeds, White on working for a living, Carson on pesticide use)? What other ideas have arisen for you this week? (for example, see Sarah's invitation, below, to dance, for a possible new direction...). And/or what "ecologically imaginings" do you have re: Hurricane Sandy? You're welcome to post stand-alone comments, but also please consider writing in response to what a classmate has said....
![sarahj's picture sarahj's picture](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8677dfd40888c5ca340f68264da0938d.jpg?d=https%3A%2F%2Fserendipstudio.org%2Fexchange%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FSerendipStudioAvatar.png&s=85&r=G)
Finding Ourselves Before Finding Ourselves in Nature
After class today I found myself thinking more about what it means to be ecological and movement. I do think that to truly realize our interconnected-ness with the natural world around us we need to incorporate more movement into our study. Being still or stationary in nature has its value, but I think movement has more. How often is anything in nature motionless?
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
Predicting the movements of the earth...
This NYTimes article caught my eye, mostly for its assumptions about predictability (and human responsibility for geological events):
"Seven prominent Italian earthquake experts were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years for failing to give adequate warning to the residents of a seismically active area in the months preceding a fatal earthquake that killed more than 300 people...."
![Smacholdt's picture Smacholdt's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-783.jpg)
Some Miscellaneous Thoughts
This post is doubtless going to be a little scattered because I wanted to sum up some of the thoughts that I had at the end of class today. Firstly, I was thinking about the ideas of ecology and dystopia as interconnected literary genres. I read a book over the summer called The Age of Miracles (See link to the NPR review: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/02/155098886/the-age-of-miracles-considers-earths-fragility) This is a strange title for a book which is exclusively about the end of nature as we know it. The premise of the book is that our interference with the earth had affected gravity, and thus slowed the spinning of the earth, causing a myriad of problems. The genre of the novel is science fiction (as per our discussion a few weeks ago about representations of the ecological crisis.) But I also think that the book could fit into a new and emerging literary classification, ecological dystopia.
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
Mid-semester course evals
By 5 p.m. on Sun, Oct. 21 (the date of our return), please
post (AS A COMMENT HERE) a mid-semester course evaluation:
* take some time to review all your postings/papers,
reflecting on what's working and what needs working on,
both for you as an individual learner and for the class as a learning community.
* How are you using the class? How do you see others using it, individually and as a group?
* How is this course functioning "ecologically," how might it be more "ecological" in structure and action?
* Are there additional ways you can imagine y/our using the class, to expand our understanding?
![Srucara's picture Srucara's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-1126.jpg)
An Invitation to Be and Become through Bryn Mawr's Labyrinth
Anne had shared this piece earlier as a reply to Smacholdt's Thoreauvian (Labyrinth) walk but I just wanted to expose this a bit further and share once again - Jeanne-Rachel Salomon is the creator of the Labyrinth that sits next to the hill in front of Rhoads. She had an interest in Shamanism, cured herself of cancer (not suprisingly) and states, "If one has travelled long enough and the distance between the onset of the journey and the moment of reflection is sufficient, one gains understanding of the journey’s meaning." A frequent visitor of the labyrinth myself, I invite you all to "be and become" more in tune with your lives and take a few moments of reflection and journey through the labyrinth and through life with a renewed awareness.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/mcbride1.htm#salomon
![Anne Dalke's picture Anne Dalke's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-39.jpg)
"If we have never been natural, are we now, at last, ecological?"
SLSA 2013 CALL FOR PAPERS
The 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
VENUE: The Campus of the University of Notre Dame
DATES: October 3-6, 2013
CONFERENCE THEME: POSTNATURAL?
What does it mean to come “after” nature? In 2012, Arctic ice melted to the lowest level in human history; with ice everywhere in retreat, island nations are disappearing, species vectors are shifting, tropical diseases are moving north, northern natures-cultures are moving into extinction. Acidification of ocean water already threatens Northwest shellfish farms, while historic wildfires, droughts, floods, and shoreline erosion are the norm. Reality overshoots computer models of global warming even as CO2 emissions escalate. Yet none of this has altered our way of living or our way of thinking: as Fredric Jameson noted, we can imagine the collapse of the planet more easily than the fall of capitalism. What fundamental reorientations of theory—of posthumanity and animality, of agency, actants, and aporias, of bodies, objects, assemblages and networks, of computing and cognition, of media and bioart—are needed to articulate the simple fact that our most mundane and ordinary lives are, even in the span of our own lifetimes, unsustainable? If we have never been natural, are we now, at last, ecological?
![ekthorp's picture ekthorp's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-866.jpg)
No Idea
Every week, I have tried to do something drastically different with my posting. This week, I feel like I have run out of something different to do. When I was talking to Sara about this, she said that maybe that was the point. To keep returning to our spots until we run out of ways to describe it, and have to innovate a new way. I'm not sure if I achieved this when I went out to just exist in the ourdoors, but it was something very different for me.
![hirakismail's picture hirakismail's picture](https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/files/pictures/picture-1142.jpg)
Nature Watching Versus People Watching
I wanted to begin with talking about how this weekly observation exercise is similar to ones I had to do for an acting class I took. I was told by my professor to observe and take notes on people in several cases. She knew I had a dining hall job at the time, and thus interacted with many people as a worker. She wanted me to take notice of people, both co-workers and students coming to eat. The idea was that by observing how people move, talk, communicate, and exude their moods with their whole bodies, as actors we could take in this information to enhance our own acting styles. In my time doing these observations, I realized that the dining hall is a place where humans are less likely to be performative and more down to earth. It is a place where people are completing a basic survival need-eating. So watching them take food from the salad bar or how they ordered food from the hot line was an example of this. Some would be in a hurry and wouldn't communicate much, hurriedly filling their takeout boxes, others would be caught up in conversations, almost everyone talked about how hungry they were. Just observing human interaction at its most basic was my goal, and I would journal about it afterward.