An Elephant in my Kitchen by Françoise Malby-Anthony

 

Summary (modified from Amazon): Sequel to The Elephant Whisperer, which was written by Lawrence Anthony, in this book, his wife Françoise writes about her experiences after she has to carry on after his death. She never expected to find herself responsible for a herd of elephants with a troubled past. A chic Parisienne, she with Lawrence founded a game reserve but after his death, Françoise faced the daunting responsibility of running Thula Thula without him. Poachers attacked their rhinos, their security team wouldn’t take orders from a woman and the authorities were threatening to cull their beloved elephant family. On top of that, the herd’s feisty new matriarch Frankie didn’t like her.

In this heart-warming and moving book, Françoise describes how she fought to protect the herd and to make her dream of building a wildlife rescue centre a reality. She found herself caring for a lost baby elephant who turned up at her house, and offering refuge to traumatized orphaned rhinos, and a hippo called Charlie who was scared of water.

(https://www.anelephantinmykitchen.com/the-story)

Reviews:

1. http://www.poachingfacts.com/resources/book-reviews/an-elephant-in-my-kitchen-review/

2. Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/francoise-malby-anthony/an-elephant-in-my-kitchen/

Website for the book: https://www.anelephantinmykitchen.com/

One of the Authors' Websites: http://www.katjawillemsen.com/home.html

(https://www.thulathula.com/south-african-safari/)

Thula Thula Game Preserve: https://www.thulathula.com/

Groups to support:

1. South African Conservation Fund: https://www.saconservation.fund

2. Four Paws International: https://www.four-paws.org/

3. My Baby Rhinos - Children Book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0NKp7SyhKA; https://www.facebook.com/mybabyrhinos/

4.Elephant Orphanage in Kenya, which Cheryl shared: https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

Other:

1. African Lullaby: Thula Baba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cLFlKcXmSk

2. Poaching Rhinos Article: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rhino-poachers-are-back-after-south-africa-eases-lockdown-restrictions-2021-05-03/

Interviews:

1. From Thula Thula Wildlife Reserve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_-Sa826KwA

2. https://anglophone-direct.com/an-elephant-in-my-kitchen/

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a8F1znHP3c

Videos:

1. Video with Lawrence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTtcz8Vuor0

Discussion Questions: (John will be leading the discussion.)

(Reader's Digest)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

 

Summary (Amazon): Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons."

(wikipedia)

Reviews:

1. Kirkus: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/annie-dillard/pilgrim-at-tinker-creek/

2. NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/03/24/archives/pilgrim-at-tinker-creek-meditation-on-seeing-by-annie-dillard-271.html

3. The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2015/02/the-thoreau-of-the-suburbs/385128/

Interviews:

1. wNYC: https://www.wnyc.org/story/david-remnick-speaks-annie-dillard/

2. NPR: https://freshairarchive.org/guests/annie-dillard

(wikipedia)

Author's Website: http://www.anniedillard.com/

Supporting materials including questions, response journals and reading guides: 

1. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=qb_oers

2. Response Journal: https://www.teachersfirst.com/lessons/pilgrim/pilgrim1.cfm

3. Reading Guide: https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/documents/SeeingandStalkingtheActionofCreation.pdf

4. A Visual Approach: http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2013/03/08/a-visual-approach-to-syntactical-and-image-patterns-in-annie-dillards-pilgrim-at-tinker-creek-essay-images-anna-maria-johnson/

(wikipedia)

Discussion Questions: 

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

 

Summary: (Amazon)

In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.

In this highly anticipated sequel to his international bestseller The Old Ways, Macfarlane takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Traveling through “deep time”―the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present―he moves from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk “hiding place” where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Woven through Macfarlane’s own travels are the unforgettable stories of descents into the underland made across history by explorers, artists, cavers, divers, mourners, dreamers, and murderers, all of whom have been drawn for different reasons to seek what Cormac McCarthy calls “the awful darkness within the world.”

Reviews:

Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/08/underland-by-robert-macfarlane-review

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/books/review-underland-robert-macfarlane.html

The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/robert-macfarlane-underland/590632/

(NY Times)

Videos, Films and Interviews:

1. Interview with Politics and Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWsRPNFfpDY

2. Interview with Book Lust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd853p8cxos

3. Documentary Film: Kiss the Ground is about regenerative agriculture and the importance and role of soil in solving climate change. https://kisstheground.com/

(goodreads.com)

Famous Caves:

1. Lascaux: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/85/

2. Chauvet: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/france-chauvet-cave-makes-grand-debut-180954582/

3. Alta, Norway: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/352/; 

https://www.rockartscandinavia.com/images/articles/a13norstedt.pdf

Hellsegga, Norway

(https://www.rando-lofoten.net/de/hellsegga-de)

Local Caves and Caverns:

1. Crystal Cave: https://crystalcavepa.com/home/

2. Broomall Caves and Lenape: https://www.visitpa.com/region/lehigh-valley/mystery-unearthed-extraordinary-story-two-lenape-rock-shelters

3. Lost River Caverns: https://www.lostcave.com/sitef/index.php

Maelstrom Whirlpool Video

(Dark Matter Labs - ZMEscience.com)

Discussion Questions: (John will lead our discussion and here are his questions.)

(irishtimes.com)

The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson

 

Summary (Amazon): 

Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery.

Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea.

Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant.

(NY Times)

Reviews: 

1. NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/books/patrik-svensson-book-of-eels-sweden.html

2. Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-book-of-eels-review-the-riddle-of-the-sargasso-sea-11588975178

3. CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-magazine-for-december-13-2020-1.5836365/what-eels-can-tell-us-about-how-humans-construct-knowledge-1.5836521

(CBC-Parks Canada)

Interviews: 

In Toronto: http://book-news.org/patrik-svensson-the-book-of-eels

Rachel Carson

1. Her books: Under the Sea and The Sea Around Us: http://www.rachelcarson.org/Books.aspx

2. Documentary about Rachel Carson: https://www.alleghenyfront.org/new-documentary-explores-the-life-and-legacy-of-rachel-carson/

3. Videos about The Sea Around Us: 

a. https://vimeo.com/185178272; 

b. https://beta.prx.org/stories/74121; 

c. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDZM6uiGCRQ

(https://www.thetimes.co.uk/)

Famous Eels:

1. Brantevik Eel: 

a. https://www.thelocal.se/20140808/worlds-oldest-eel-dies-in-sweden/

b. story and video: https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/446/An-Eel-Was-Placed-In-A-Swedish-Well-To-Keep-The-Water-Supply-Clean-It-Lived-For-155-Years

2. Fritz Netzler's Eel, "Putte": https://www.livescience.com/47333-155-year-old-eel.html

Newest Research on Eels: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72916-5

Red List of Threatened Species: International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN): https://www.iucnredlist.org/about/barometer-of-life

IUCN - Red listed: European Eel: https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/60344/152845178

Advocacy - What can you do to help? Organizations making a difference:

1. Endangered Species Coalition: Wildlife Corridors in PA: https://www.endangered.org/wildlife-corridors-pennsylvania/

2. Organizations working to save Endangered Species: Lists:

a. https://medium.com/@GVI/10-of-the-best-organizations-to-follow-that-help-endangered-animals-e2735a787269#:~:text=The%20WWF%20is%20probably%20the,land%20and%20in%20the%20ocean.

b. https://www.oysterworldwide.com/news/17-charities-that-help-endangered-animals/

Discussion Questions:

Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams

 

Summary: (Amazon) Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?"

We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument―sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself.

These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory―emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.

(latimes.com)

Reviews: 

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/books/review/erosion-terry-tempest-williams.html

Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/terry-tempest-williams-erosion-essays-of-undoing/

Professor Peaton: https://profpeaton.com/2019/12/28/terry-tempest-williams-erosion-essays-of-undoing/

National Park Traveler.org: https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/review/2020/03%E2%80%8B/erosion-essays-undoing

terrain.org: https://www.terrain.org/2020/reviews-reads/erosion/

Interviews:

Sierra Club: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/terry-tempest-williams-erosion

Politics and Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn-2hAQ9buk

Bioneers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlotWB2BLg

(terrain.org)

Supporting Material:

1. Endangered Species Act: 

a. https://defenders.org/endangered-species-act

b. Attack on the ESA: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/climate/endangered-species-act-changes.html

c. Biden's rollback and review of ESA: https://www.audubon.org/news/biden-wields-his-pen-day-one-reverse-trumps-environmental-rollbacks

2. Invoking the Pause project: https://invokingthepause.org/

a. Council of the Pronghorn: https://invokingthepause.org/council-of-pronghorn-amp-cathedral-of-st-john-the-divine_grant-partners-list_7434.html

3. Tim DeChristopher: https://www.timdechristopher.org/

a. Peaceful Uprising: http://www.peacefuluprising.org/

Discussion Questions: (Heidi will the lead the discussion)

(bioneers.org)

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham

 

Summary (Amazon): From the fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J. Drew Lanham.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina―a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”―has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.”

By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South―and in America today.

(ebird)

Reviews:

1. Los Angeles: http://losangelesreview.org/book-review-the-home-place-memoirs-of-a-colored-mans-love-affair-with-nature-by-drew-lanham/

2. Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/j-drew-lanham/the-home-place-memoirs/

Author's Website and Twitter: https://www.clemson.edu/cafls/faculty_staff/profiles/lanhamj; https://twitter.com/1blackbirder?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Edgefield, SC (farmflip.com)

Interviews and Speeches:

1. American Bird Association: https://www.aba.org/lanham-interview/

2. Black Market Treads: https://blackmarketreads.com/2020/01/02/j-drew-lanham/

3. Clemson University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4rsVy5PSwI

4. Keynote Speech at National Audubon Convention in 2017: https://www.audubon.org/news/listen-drew-lanhams-keynote-speech-2017-audubon-convention-utah

Audubon's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: 

1. Bucks County Audubon Society's Task Force on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: https://www.bcas.org/about-us/diversity-inclusion/

2. National Audubon's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Site: https://www.audubon.org/about/edi

3. Politico Article: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/12/audubon-society-claims-intimidation-threats-436215

Discussion Guide from Longwood Gardens: https://longwoodgardens.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/TheHomePlace_DiscussionGuide.pdf

Discussion Questions: (Several of these questions were used or inspired from Longwood Garden's Discussion Guide listed above. Heidi will be leading the discussion.)

 

Summary (from Amazon): "Do fishes think? Do they really have three-second memories? And can they recognize the humans who peer back at them from above the surface of the water? In What a Fish Knows, the myth-busting ethologist Jonathan Balcombe addresses these questions and more, taking us under the sea, through streams and estuaries, and to the other side of the aquarium glass to reveal the surprising capabilities of fishes. Although there are more than thirty thousand species of fish―more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined―we rarely consider how individual fishes think, feel, and behave. Balcombe upends our assumptions about fishes, portraying them not as unfeeling, dead-eyed feeding machines but as sentient, aware, social, and even Machiavellian―in other words, much like us.

What a Fish Knows draws on the latest science to present a fresh look at these remarkable creatures in all their breathtaking diversity and beauty. Fishes conduct elaborate courtship rituals and develop lifelong bonds with shoalmates. They also plan, hunt cooperatively, use tools, curry favor, deceive one another, and punish wrongdoers. We may imagine that fishes lead simple, fleeting lives―a mode of existence that boils down to a place on the food chain, rote spawning, and lots of aimless swimming. But, as Balcombe demonstrates, the truth is far richer and more complex, worthy of the grandest social novel.
Highlighting breakthrough discoveries from fish enthusiasts and scientists around the world and pondering his own encounters with fishes, Balcombe examines the fascinating means by which fishes gain knowledge of the places they inhabit, from shallow tide pools to the deepest reaches of the ocean."

Reviews: 

1. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/book-review-what-a-fish-k_b_11796698

2. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-374-28821-1

Interviews:

1. NPR, Fresh Air: https://www.npr.org/books/titles/482468120/what-a-fish-knows-the-inner-lives-of-our-underwater-cousins

2. World of Vegan: https://www.worldofvegan.com/what-a-fish-knows/

Author's Site: https://jonathan-balcombe.com/what-a-fish-knows/

Videos:

1. Zoocheck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0--HgyKg_s

2. TED Talks: "Most Eaten, Least Heard": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-mzvFxfFCQ

3. Pufferfish making a nest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaPmYYWsixU 

4. Groupers and moray eels hunting together.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4bno1oseA

5. From a trawler (graphic) showing the suffering of fish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypa3_dnb-

6. spraying characin - the fish that lay eggs and sperm on leaves above water...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD_6zPyrb00

7. Tigerfish catching barn swallow midair: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/13/262165937/chomp-fish-snatches-bird-in-flight-video

Articles: 

Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain-180967764/

D.H. Lawrence poem, Fish: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8510225-Fish-by-D-H-Lawrence

Film: My Octopus Teacher (Sheryl recommended this incredible and beautiful movie)

Info: https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A

NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/15/923915545/filmmaker-finds-an-unlikely-underwater-friend-in-my-octopus-teacher

Discussion Questions: (These are from Sheryl - a big thank you!)

(wikipedia)