a curious Yankee in Europe's court

Passing Comments

Breathtaking four minutes and thirty-two seconds: Paul Bunyard

Posted on the November 30th, 2011


Click on screenshot above to watch video

“Chasing the Light,” by Paul Bunyard
“Montage of clips taken during 2010 & 2011 whilst on my projects all shot on DSLR Canon 7D & Canon 60D”

 


Tree with pink buds

Posted on the March 5th, 2011

Cold, gray, rainy afternoon here. Nonetheless.

 

 

 

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Being a great admirer of snails

Posted on the September 10th, 2010

I came across this tiny snail on a trail in the Dolomites near Padola, Italy this summer. 


Photographer’s ode to nature

Posted on the January 14th, 2010

From an extraordinary website of a young Texas photographer, Jason M. Hogle. Exquisite photos.  Click on photo to see more. xenogere.com

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David Gessner writes a manifesto

Posted on the April 30th, 2008

Last week, Beacon Broadside website printed an excerpt from the essay “My Green Manifesto” by David Gessner. Below I’ve excerpted from Beacon’s excerpt. If you want to read Gassner’s full essay, you can find it here.

In Manifesto, Gessner himself excerpts one of his earlier essays:

The essay came about when, after throwing a book against a wall in which the author had droned on serenely about “being the present moment” and “living in the natural woods,” I went for a walk on my unnatural beach carrying my unnatural micro-cassette recorder, into which I spoke the beginnings of an essay. When the essay was later published it began exactly the way I spoke it that day as I tramped along the beach:

I am sick of nature. Sick of trees, sick of birds, sick of the ocean.

Of course I wasn’t really sick of the natural world, just of the way some writers chose to portray it. I was sick of the hushed voice, sick of the saintliness, sick of the easy notions of the perfectibility of man, sick of the apocalyptic robes, sick of the scolding. But most of all I was sick of the certainty that seemed to ooze out of the words. Writers certain that they knew what would happen in the world and certain that they knew how to be in that world and certain that they should tell us these things. The odd thing was that, for all their certainty, the world they described didn’t sound much at all like the world I happened to live in.