Cape Verde at the Whaling Museum

Southeastern Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island is the most Lusophone region in the United States. Our longstanding connections to Cape Verde, the Azores, and other Portuguese-speaking lands have their origins in whaling industry. For this reason, the New Bedford Whaling Museum (of which my family has been a supporting member for a number of years) has substantial permanent and temporary exhibits about these regions and strong connections to local Cape Verdean and Azorian communities.

Permanent exhibits about whaling in these two Atlantic archipelagos occupy more than half of the upper level of the Lagoda room -- whose main level features the world's largest model ship.

Cape Verde flag of 1975 - 1992
From my Morabeza exhibit album on Flickr

This post, however, is about two important temporary exhibits. As of this writing, I have spent some time with Morabeza: Cape Verdean Community in the South Coast (running May 24, 2025 through February 26, 2026). Some of my own impressions of this exhibit are in the captions of a few photos I have posted from my first visit. I will be returning to learn more, particularly about this local community's contributions to music at the national and global level. 

As of this writing, I am still looking forward to another exhibit, opening at the end of this week. Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art will run from the evening of May 13 through December 7, 2025. I will have much more to share about it after I attend the opening reception. 

Both of these exhibitions honor the 50th anniversary of Cape Verde's independence from Portugal.

Lagniappe

For much more on regional connections with Cape Verde, please visit the Cape Cod Cape Verdean Museum and Cultural Center in Falmouth. It includes a kiosk exhibit developed by one of my former students; her work is also available online as Tale of Two Capes. I learned very much from the minor role I played in that project -- particularly from CCCV founder Barbara Burgo.

Wherefore the Sirens?

Browsing Netflix offerings recently, we noticed a limited series called Sirens. The title alone lured us in (as it were), since I am an honorary member of a whaleboat rowing team called the Sirenes. Honorary member means that I often fill in as a substitute on this all-women's team so that they have a full boat. Sometimes I even get to race with them. 

In any case, the title and vaguely nautical vibes were enough to get us watching. It was a vague echo of the Nicole Kidman vehicle The Perfect Couple, a 2024 Netflix production that was set on Nantucket. Although we have not been there recently, this is a favorite haunt of ours, the only place in the United States that is an island, a county, and a town.

This show that clearly intended to depict Nantucket,  Characters came and went by ferry. One of them had a 17-hour trip from Buffalo. There were a lot of rich, white people and gray houses with white trim. A cute little downtown with big mansions a short drive away. Eventually, a neighborhood and a gulf course on Nantucket were named. But the writers and directors worked very hard not to mention it directly.

We were well into the series when Pam's keen eye caught a sign on the side of shop in said cute little town (creatively dubbed Harbor Town), and on the sign was carved its purported latitude and longitude. 

I took this photo of the screen -- both because the image was fleeting and the resolution low -- and went right to Google Maps. Incidentally, I was glad to see the degree-minutes-seconds format, which said Google Maps is making increasingly rare, and I note that even if correct, it is far more precise than accurate. By that I mean that four decimal places in the expression of a second of latitude or longitude equates to about 1/8 of an inch, which is smaller than the decimal point in use. 

Anyway, enough of the suspense. These coordinates are a bit out to sea, almost as far from Nantucket as the island is wide. But it is clearly the nearest landmass, so the carving was clearly intentional.

We are reminded of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, in which the latitude and longitude of Grover's Corners describes a point in the Atlantic close to New Hampshire but not in any real state.

As for the filming location of Sirens, IMDb indicates that it is North Fork, New York. That is, the North Fork of the eastern end of Long Island. It has a cultural geography and vernacular landscape similar to Nantucket. The physical landscape is also similar, given that both are terminal moraines formed by side by side at the end of the last ice age and later surrounded by rising ocean as the glaciers that formed them continued to melt. 

Africa Book Club

The World Book Club is one of my favorite BBC programs. Or should I write programmes?

Harriett Gilbert: A third-generation writer who does her research!

Its entire two decades of episodes are now available as a podcast, and I find myself listening frequently. Because I am prone to fumbling my podcast app, I often hear an episode several times, and I do not mind at all. I have read only a small fraction of the books under discussion, but I find that presenter Harriett Gilbert leads an entertaining and profoundly educational discussion with every participating author. I will enjoy an episode even if I have heard it recently.

The World Book Club is appropriately named. Each month a book is selected and announced so that readers have a chance to read the book and send in questions. The author then meets with the presenter and invited guests in person, usually at BBC's Bush House in London. The author is then introduced, always taking note of awards won and the number of languages into which their work has been translated. 

Gilbert and her team then curate questions from the live audience, from emailed questions, and from phone calls, along with her own questions that arise from her expert reading of the work. I use the term "curate" because the questions tend to follow a very helpful pattern, with general questions that might be asked of any writer near the beginning, followed by increasingly detailed and sophisticated questions that would arise only from a careful reading.

Gilbert graciously acknowledges each question, sometimes adding an expert edit as she repeats it, and always acknowledging mentioning where the caller or writer is from. And because she is a BBC journalist, she always pronounces names of both people and places correctly! In any given discussion,  it is likely that people from at least three continents will have participated. 

The list below is from all of the episodes for which I could readily connect the author to the African continent. Most of these are novels set somewhere in Africa and written by African authors. I have listed only one country as a kind of shorthand -- listen to the episodes to learn that many of these authors call several countries home and that many of the books are set in multiple places -- or in some cases fictional countries. Moreover, as is often the case, these episodes have a focus on one book, but with some authors a broader body of work enters th conversation.

Each entry below includes a link to a BBC page and/or a Spotify page as available. I also include dates of each author's life and each novel's publication.

February 2002 - Zimbabwe
Chenjerai Hove (1956 - 2015) Ancestors (1997)
(Spotify)
This is just the third episode of World Book Club -- the interest in Africa comes early in this series. It is just a conversation between the author and the host -- there were no questions from audience yet.

December 2002 - Nigeria

Ben Okri (1959 - ) The Famished Road (1991)

(Spotify)

July 2004 - South Africa

Gillian Slovo (1952 - ) Red Dust (2000)

(Spotify)

August 2005 - South Africa

Andre Brink (1935-2015) A Dry White Season (1979) 

(Spotify) Film adaptation in 1989: IMDb

This is an episode I will share in my Africa course -- it includes a bit of a meta converstation that connects to my own work as an educator and to my spouse's academic expertise as a librarian.

December 2006 - Ghana

William Boyd (1952 - ) Brazzaville Beach (1990)

(Spotify)

May 2007 - Nigeria 

Wole Soyinka (1934 - ) Ake: The Years of Childhood (1989)

Most books on this programme are novels, but this is the author's memoir. 

(Spotify) 

July 2008 - Nigeria

Chinua Achebe (1930 - 2013) Things Fall Apart (1958)

(Spotify)

June 2009 - Nigeria

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977 - ) Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

(Spotify)

I have read two of Adichie's novels, and have sometimes assigned Half of a Yellow Sun in my Africa survey course. Her TED Talk is an important part of my teaching and has had over 14 million views on YouTube. I recommend her novel Americanah as well.

November 2009 - Egypt

Alaa Al Aswany (1957 - ) The Yacoubian Building (2009)

(Spotify)

April 2010 - Western Sahara/Mauritius

J.M.G. Le Clezio (1957 - ) Desert (2012)

(Spotify)

December 2010 - South Africa

Damon Galgut (1963 - ) The Good Doctor (2003)

(Spotify)

September 2011 - Libya

Hisham Matar (1970 - ) In The Country Of Men (2006)

(Spotify)

December 2015 - Sudan

Leila Aboulela (1964 - ) Minaret (2005)

(Spotify)

April 2016 - Somalia

Nuruddin Farah (1945 - ) Maps (1986)

(Spotify)

March 2019 - Kenya

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938 - 2025) A Grain of Wheat (1967)

This episode was actually recorded in a Nairobi bookshop.

(Spotify)

UPDATE: The author died in May 2025. Please see the BBC obituary Giant of African literature to learn more about his contribution to post-colonial literature, the price he and his family paid for his writing, his connections to other writers mentioned on this post, and allegations about his own domestic behavior.

August 2019 - Nigeria

Chigozie Obioma (1986 - ) The Fishermen (2015)

(Spotify)

February 2020 - Zimbabwe

Petina Gappah (1971 - ) The Book of Memory (2015)

(Spotify)

December 2020 - Ghana

Yaa Gyasi (1989 - ) Homegoing (2016)

(Spotify)

March 2021 - Zimbabwe

Tsitsi Dangarembga (1959 - ) Nervous Conditions (1988)

(Spotify)

October 2021 - Nigeria

Wole Soyinka (1934 - ) Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021)

This interview celebrates the author's third novel -- written 50 years after his second.

(Spotify)

April 2022 - Zimbabwe

NoViolet Bulawayo (1981 - ) We Need New Names (2013)

(Spotify)

May 2025 - Tanzania

Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948 - ) Paradise (1994)

(Spotify)

This list includes an average of about one episode per year with an African author. I could not help but do a bit of geographic math. If the continents were represented according to population, there would be about two per year from Africa. Authors of Asia and Latin America appear with similar frequency. This being a British production in English, the United States and United Kingdom probably account for half of the episodes.

I am reminded of Ann Morgan's 2015 book The World Between Two Covers, which my librarian spouse and I read together in 2019. Morgan describes a year spent reading one book published in English in each of the world's countries. It was more complicated than she anticipated, and helps to explain why some countries are much better represented than others on the list above.

Passing of the First Argentine Pope

 

When speaking with my students about the legacy of the first Latin American pope -- who was born in Buenos Aires -- I will begin class with this example of music that he loved: the tango.

I thought to do this while listening to a remembrance of Pope Francis by NPR journalist Sylvia Poggioli. I am highlighting it Poggioli's reporting because she speaks specifically about the geographic context of his life story and papacy.

It is just one of several interesting stories about the pope's passing on the April 21 edition of the morning program.

I also recommend a couple of early items about the inevitable political connotations. With 1.4 billion adherents in every part of the earth and of all political persuasions, interactions between politicians and the head of the smallest state and the largest religion are notable. I noticed an interesting article -- with a bit of video -- about his awkwarrd visit with U.S. Vice President Vance, who turned out to be one of the last people to see him alive. The other is a NPR journalist Mary Louise Kelly interviewing former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi about her four visits with Pope Francis over the years.

Nantucket Atheneum

 "As I made many journeys there, I began to speak to the people of the town, and once I walked in merely to attend a lecture at the Atheneum. Nantucket Town was a pleasant plae, with many independent and intelligent women. When men were home from the sea, they were happy to socialize along with their wives. I much liked the gabbiness of the town, for the talk was not mere gossip but of ideas and politics, spiced with the customs and sights from all around the globe."

-- Ahab's Wife or, the Star-Gazer p. 337 (end of chapter 77)

The Coffee Maven prior to a 2007 Atheneum appearance

The passage above is near the middle of Sena Jeter Naslund's 1999 novel, which could be called Moby Dick fan fiction. As with the original novel, it has much to do with New Bedford and Nantucket but also oceans a world away. I am a slow reader and this is something of a slow book. I have enjoyed it as a mood piece over the past several years, during stays at our weekend place that we have dubbed Whaling House. 

I was away from the house and the book for nearly a year as the house was renovated as our full-time home. Now that the dust has literally settled, I have dipped back into this book, savoring a few pages at a time. This is just the kind of novel -- or film -- I enjoy most: rich in texture, characters, and atmosphere. 

I read this passage aloud to my librarian spouse and share it again here because it mentions something we have actually done together. In 2007, we delivered a lecture at the Atheneum. This was very early in my time as a public scholar of coffee, and it was a delight to be ferried over to the island to talk about our travels to the coffeelands of Nicaragua. What better place for a local talk on a global topic? 

I think it was from this experience that I learned that Atheneum usually refers to a private library, but in this case, the Atheneum serves as the public library for Nantucket. (Geographic note: although the Atheneum is in the densely-settled area near the harbor that is considered Nantucket Town, it is the case that Nantucket is a town, a county, and an island -- all occupying the same exact space.)

Our dear friend Nancy had grown up near the Atheneum and was a clerk there for many years. She played a big role in organizing lectures and hosting the speakers at her family's guest house. She also arranged for us to give related presentations at nearby schools, which I describe on my old coffee outreach page. 

The excerpt above mentions a few other things of interest. One is that when it was the global center of the whaling industry, women ran their households and the town. It also was a tiny place with global connections, much as its successor New Bedford became. Travel broadens the mind and globally diverse communities like these are good for the mind.

Which leads to the last point -- conversation is more interesting when we have diverse experiences to share. And it was a casual conversation on a street corner a couple blocks from the Atheneum that made Moby Dick possible. 

Lagniappe

Happy National Library Week to those who celebrate -- which should be all of us. My slow reading of Ahab's Wife brought me to the Atheneum passage on the first day of the 2025 celebration.

I am immensely proud of both librarians in my house. My wife Pamela has worked in every kind of library -- academic, corporate, and public -- both as a professional and as a volunteer. 

Our son Harvey has worked in a few libraries and archives and is now an outstanding student of library science at the University of Rhode Island. He is keenly interested in seeing that everybody has access to libraries. 

Libraries are among the public institutions most directly under attack here in the United States. Our family stands firmly for the freedom to read.

Citizen Science for the Birds

I have been an NPR nerd long enough to have fond memories of listening to Talk of the Nation whenever I had free afternoons, and especially on my way to carpool duty. It was a five-day program similar to Fresh Air,  and probably adjacent on our local schedule. 

I was sad when TotN ended, but glad that it only ended by 80 percent. That is to say, it retained  one day a week of programming. Fridays had been dedicated to fun and informative conversations about science, and Ira Flatow has continued that part under the name Science Friday. A decade or so on, he continues to bring great energy and enthusiasm to conversations with scientists, science educators, and science journalists of many kinds, working at all scales from the subatomic to the galactic. 

I particularly enjoyed his recent conversation about citizen science with Dr. Brooke Bateman and Dr. Janet Ng, who have been involved in the longest-running such project: the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I believe I first learned about the count around the time I moved to Massachusetts, when I noticed local results in a newspaper a couple of days after Christmas. 

Photo: Shutterstock by way of Science Friday

I knew that it was much bigger than that, but it was only from the recent 17-minute segment What Scientists Have Learned From 125 Years Of Bird Counts that I learned how much bigger. The Doctors Ng and Bateman discuss their very different roles in science and policy, along with their very similar roles as two of the 80,000 people who did the actual counting this year. 

They also share the charming story of how this all began and the culture of cooperation and mentoring that has grown with this tradition. Some people have just done this for the first time, while others have been leaders in their local communities for more than 50 years in a row. Everybody is welcome, including people with limited mobility and limited (even zero) expertise. 

I invite readers to listen to the entire discussion for some examples of just what is being gained from the gathering, mapping, and analysis of these avian observations. Some of it is worrisome and some of it encouraging; all of it is fascinating. I will be using it both in my Environmental Geography survey course and in my advanced Land Protection course. The former emphasizes global climate change and the latter local landscape change; each course could use this healthy dose of both. And I am pleased that my good friend Geography Jeff will be using it in his Environmental Planning course at another school.

Lagniappe

Fresh Air with Terry Gross & Tanya Moseley continues to thrive five days a week. I have been listening pretty regularly since before it moved up from WHYY to NPR, and
I am glad that Terry Gross has worked so hard to cultivate a co-host who is allowing her gradually to transition toward a well deserved but as-yet unannounced retirement. 

Dam Expertise

I have been enjoying the work of journalist Ayesha Rascoe since she became host of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, and this morning she uttered a phrase that endeared her to me even further.

"Your expertise is in geography," she said in the middle of a conversation about a proposed hydroelectric project in China with professor Mark Giordano, of Georgetown Univerity's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Their brief conversation draws on geography to clarify many of the physic and human implications of China's proposal to build a hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River.

Map: Wikipedia

One odd oversight is that they do not. name the river directly, though Professor Giordano does explain several things about its geography that make this project both desirable and problematic, particularly for India and Tibet. In addition to this NPR interview, I recommend a recent BBC report for further background. 

Castorology

When my librarian-in-training son recommended the Ologies podcast, I knew it would be good. After all, I've enjoyed countless hours of NPAD, all starting with his recommendation of the Cuyahoga Falls episode.

Host Alie Ward identifies -- or creates -- the formal name for any area of study about which she is curious and then finds a top (or in many cases the top) expert in that field. The core of each episode is an interview with that expert -- an interview that takes place only after she has done considerable research. This is then augmented by quick asides that she sprinkles throughout the interview and trove of related links on the Ologies web site. 

I cannot remember which was the first Ology episode I heard, though it was probably Pomology (I'll pause while you go have fun with that if you like). The most recent, however, is the title of this post: Castorology, the study of beavers. Yes: beavers, not vegetable oil. 

Pointing my readers (including my Land Protection students) to Ward's interview with naturalist (and castorologist) Rob Rich is the main purpose of this post. As always, she really has identified the perfect interlocutor for this discussion. The discussion ranges widely over the natural history and anatomy of the animal itself to the uses of its fur, tail, and glands to its complicated role in hydrology and landscape ecology. Those little critters get a lot done!

By happy coincidence, while I was still thinking about sharing this episode, BBC decided to rebroadcast a shorter piece featuring beavers, an August 2024 episode of Inside Science entitled Beavers of London. This episode features the 2023 introduction of beavers to Ealing Park in London, where beavers have long been absent. The discussion then turns to a broader discussion of reintroducing species that have disappeared from human-dominated landscapes, in which the organization Rewild My Street is recommended. My understanding of this story was greatly improved by having heard the castorology episode. 

Photo: from my July 2024 Dam Mammals post on this very blog,
in which I comment on two beaver ponds I have visited recently.

Lagniappe: 

The Coffee Maven recommends the Coffeeology episode, in which Ward interviews one of the first coffee experts I met, Peter Giuliano. Not only did I meet him in the coffeelands of Matagalpa, but I also first heard of his company from one of the first coffee farmers I ever met. He has also been featured in a couple of the films I show my classes. So pour a cup of free-range coffee and be prepared to percolate some knowledge!

The Solstice Cometh

It was the longest of days; it was the shortest of days.

That is, it will be both this coming Saturday as the Solstice arrives at 9:20 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (0920 zulu), or 4:20 a.m. EST Saturday morning. In preparation, our minister devoted our Sunday service to the upcoming event -- a lengthening of days for us. 

More light is coming!
Image: There is a Day for That

The service highlighted the earth-centered origins of the various festivals of light that are central to so many traditions at this time of year. (Meanwhile, I see my friends in Brazil posting "almost summer" from their beaches!)

As part of our service here at First Parish UU Bridgewater, Pastor Rosemary led us in singing Baltimorean Charlie Murphy's "Light is Returning" and read to us from The Shortest Day, a book for all ages by Susan Cooper and Carson Ellis. The entire service will be available as a recording, but for now I will share video versions I was fortunate to find online.

First, Charlie Murphy performing Light is Returning with Pat Wright and the Total Experience Gospel Choir. 

And then The Shortest Day, as read by Tiffanie St. Clair. 

Lagniappe

I share all of this because I like to include pagan and other earth-centered traditions in my teaching about the seasons, which otherwise focuses on math and physics. Both are important for a rich understanding of geography. I am also sharing this because of connections we are building with the dynamic Geochron maps in our Geography and CASE programs at BSU. 

Stay tuned for more information about community programs around the cardinal and cross-quarter dates. For now I invite you to explore the Geochron web site (especially the animation at the bottom of its home page and the winter solstice page at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. 

Planning for Plant Hardiness

As the world's climate changes generally, the climate of specific places is changing in more particular ways. Even the variability of temperature, precipitation, and the timing of each increases, a more detailed understanding of biogeography is a necessary tool for climate adaptation. 

Journalist Susan Philips at WHYY in Philadelphia provides an excellent example in her recent story Climate Fixers. This five-minute story provides a lot of important insights as it explores the efforts of researchers and fruit growers who are anticipating changes in the regional climate as they plan future crops. This is particularly important in any kind of food (or beverage) production that relies on trees, because the productive years of a tree -- be it apple, peach, coffee, or tea -- begins at least a few years after planting and may continue many years after that.

See interactive map at USDA

The preparations include reliance on the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which is familiar to gardeners and landscapers. As often as I have consulted these maps, I did not realize that they are mapping just one variable as a proxy for winter harshness: the average lowest low temperature. 

A ZIP Code search of the map returns a zone rating that can easily be used at nurseries and seed companies. It also provides the average temperature for 2013 and 2023; it is not clear which years go into a given average, but it is something like a trailing ten-year average. 

Philadelphia clearly is experiencing substantial change by this measure, and as the WHYY story indicates, it might soon be in a new category altogether. 

This map is akin to biome maps, though the latter rely on a more complex set of climate metrics. In both cases, the map is pointing to past experience rather than future patterns. Choosing an appropriate period of record is important: it must be both long enough to minimize random fluctuations and recent enough to capture relevant experience.