Links that may or may not be related to gardens, food, travel, nature, or heterotopias and liminal spaces but probably are. Sources in parentheses.
article: Hydropower (Hiker’s Notebook). A history of hydropower — the use of water to do work — in the U.S., with some global details as well.
photo essay: A Visual Celebration of Grassland Cicadas (Chris Helzer/The Prairie Ecologist). Amusingly written with fabulous photos of, and many endearments for, the cicada. “In the eastern part of the state, we get Megatibicen dorsatus and further west, we get the nearly identical Megatibicen tremulus. They’re both called “Bush Cicadas”, which is ok, I guess, though I don’t think they’re really tied to bushes or other woody plants. (Please don’t tie insects to bushes.)” There are multiple genera for cicadas: Neotibicen, Cicadettana, Okanagana, Megatibicen are all mentioned here.
cocktail recipe & essay: The Spirits #159: Remember the Maine (Richard Godwin/The Spirits). “The Remember the Maine is one of the many drinks documented by the Prohibition-era American roustabout Charles H. Baker Jr in his Gentleman’s Companion of 1939. He describes drinking one of these in Havana, 1933, while the Hotel Nacional was under shell fire.” The sinking of the U.S.S. Maine warship in Havana Harbour in February 1898 was one of the precipitating incidents of the Spanish-American war of that year; in the movie Citizen Kane, “a senior reporter who has been sent to cover the unrest in Cuba complains that there is no war and offers to send back prose poems about the lovely scenery instead. This prompting the famous reply from Kane: ‘Dear Wheeler. You provide the prose-poems. I’ll provide the war’ Thank goodness we don’t allow amoral narcissist nepo-babies this much unchecked power these days, eh?” Make sure to read through at least his 7th item to the xray of Godwin’s “left clavicle, which I managed to fracture in two places playing football on Sunday night. (My left arm is my cocktail-shaking arm – which is why it’s a stirred cocktail this week).”
essay with photos: Why make something beautiful? on starting a rose garden (Simon Sarris/The Map Is Mostly Water). “So far (in mostly 2024) I have planted 97 rose bushes. Not 97 different kinds, I am interested in a good deal of massing, so I often plant in sets of at least 3 to give a larger appearance.” Photos of the 20 varieties he’s planted are shown, plus the 12 more varieties he’s ordered to plant this year, too add to the “three thousand bulbs, mostly species tulips and daffodils” already planted. (He mentions the rose garden at Fuller Gardens in NH, not glowingly. Sarris lives in Amherst, NH.)
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