who said it? #141 the essence of all work

Bertrand Russell - the famously agnostic philosopher - said there are two kinds of work in this world: altering the position of matter on earth, and telling other people to alter the position of matter on earth.

From The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs (p. 80)

pics from pampas jungle trip + article on Madidi Nat. Park

outlook of Rurre, main river, and mountains

Fearing that parenthood would greatly decrease my ability to continue adventuring (not that parenting isn't adventurous!), I (Adam) convinced Andy to bring his two older boys on a trip to the pampas near Rurrenabaque, on the edge of the magnificent Madidi National Park. The park itself protects land from the Amazon rainforest proper all the way up to the Andes mountains. We chose the budget-friendly pampas tour (insanely affordable for the value), instead of the actual rainforest, because you actually see more wildlife there.

orgullo en su pais

The tour was essentially water-based, centered around a humble river that cut through cattle-grazing land. Together with a German woman, a Swiss couple, and some Kiwis, we loaded our belongings into a long canoe with an outboard motor. We took our time getting to camp, stopping to look at wildlife along the way. Camp was a simple affair, with walkways and rustic cabins (shacks with blue tarps and not-quite-sealed mosquito nets) on stilts for when the pampas really gets flooded.

To avoid a lengthy commentary, I'll try to just list some of the things I remember. This was 1/2 a year ago already. All photos are credit Andy Baker - amazing photographer!

*an unsuccessful anaconda hunt. This means giving the gringos some wading boots and telling them to spread out throughout the swamp - yell when you see something. I was more interested in the new birds I saw...

*caiman nighttime hunt from the boat (shining lights at their eyes). Pepe was the camp croc, supposedly tame. I tried to keep my distance when they were tossing him meat.

trust me

*piraña fishing (we ate them for lunch)

*barefoot soccer and cold drinks with other guides and groups as the sun set over the pasture

*swimming with pink freshwater dolphins

you've got company

*howler monkeys waking us at 6 am sharp. The most other-worldly song I've ever heard. Turn up your speakers, close your eyes, and imagine you woke up to this, sleeping in the jungle, with no idea what it was:

a type of Capuchin monkey, much smaller than the Howler

*huge jarbiru stork nesting in a tree above our camp (these things are as tall as Becky + 8 ft wingspan)

*experiencing all of this 4- and 8-yr old boys. awesome!

The scariest moment was when one of our crew was rendered immobile/unresponsive by just 7 bites of tiny black ants. Crazy! Thankfully, he recovered.

It was quite the adventure, but we didn't hack deep into virgin rainforest or anything. Some people still do that... and it's not pretty. Here's an excerpt (warning: it's graphic) from Bugging Out - Into Madidid's Teeming Jungle: A Photographer's Journal by Joel Sartore (March 2000, National Geographic)

... Marcelo, our lead boat driver, tells a quick pig story as we pack up to leave.

We were hunting the chanchos (pigs) last year near the Rio Beni, not far from here. We saw a group of fifty. We killed Ten. This made them mad. They charged us. We ran and climbed trees. One of my friends didn't get high enough, and the chanchos pulled him down. We heard screams for a while, then waited to come down. When we found him, we found only pieces. Many pieces. We took the pieces of him to his parents' house. We were sad our friend had died such a terrible death."

Even the pigs can kill you here. A man Rosa Maria knows survived a pig attack but now has no butt. He didn't get quite high enough in the tree, and the pigs bit it all off...

...It's almost Christmas, and I'm more than ready to go home. I feel for the people here. Poverty abounds. Everything is worn out or broken. The kids in town swim in raw sewage. Rosa Maria points out that most of the world lives like this.

I know she's right. But I'm beat, and I just to sleep.
Now, if only the boro [live botfly maggot] in the back of my hand would do the same.

Editor's Note: Eight weeks after Sartore returned from a second trip to Bolivia, a wound on his lower right leg began to grow. He had contracted leishmaniasis -- caused by a flesh-eating parasite -- through the bite of a sand fly. The infection spread to his lymph system and created a hole in his leg the size of a silver dollar. The infection was eventually controlled by a combination of surgery and a 21-day intravenous treatment of an antimony compound. He'll know in ten years if he's fully cured.

who said it? #139 Job, on what animals teach us

But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
       or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
       or let the fish of the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know
       that the hand of the LORD has done this?

In his hand is the life of every creature
       and the breath of all mankind.

(Job 12:7-10, NIV 1984)

"MONEY:

... a chart of almost all of it, where it is, and what it can do"

I don't even want to think of how long this took...

(non-clickable) Screenshot:

Abuela Grillo

who said it? #137 bird love, general and specific

When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wrong with the world, I naturally gravitated to environmentalism, because there were certainly plenty of things wrong with the environment. And the more I looked at what was wrong — an exploding world population, exploding levels of resource consumption, rising global temperatures, the trashing of the oceans, the logging of our last old-growth forests — the angrier I became.

Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.

But then a funny thing happened to me. It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.

And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.

Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved.

And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain.

How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I’d never even known existed. Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Jonathan Franze, Technology provides an alternative to love (NYT op-ed)

I've been keeping track of my birding on my other blog...