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.

Progress without Displacement

From the WBUR podcast The Common comes the encouraging story of Upham's Corner, a Boston neighborhood within the bigger Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. A national study suggests that Uphams Corner (the apostrophe has become optional) is achieving what is often an elusive balance: developing economically without displacing it residents or losing its character. That is, it is experiencing improvement without gentrification. 

The podcast episode is a conversation between journalist Darryl C. Murphy and researcher Rohit Acharya of Common Good Labs. The discussion draws on "Reducing poverty without community displacement: Indicators of inclusive prosperity in U.S. neighborhoods," a 2022 study that Acharya wrote with Rhett Morris for the Brookings Institution. 

Photo: Metropolitan Area Planning Council

The conversation is national in scope, but with a rich local example. That part of the conversation draws on "The neighborhood that got it right," a 2023 Boston Globe article by journalist David Scharfenberg. The combination of academic analysis and journalistic storytelling is a great way to explore this important topic. 

Transit-oriented Development

The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) of Massachusetts is hearing a very nuanced case at the intersection (pun intended) of transit policy and housing policy. As the case came before the court, I heard discussions on several local programs; I think the best overview is provided by Darryl C. Murphy and Rob Lane in a recent Radio Boston segment on WBUR.

In short, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA or more commonly "the T") requires the communities it serves to enact zoning regulations that encourage high-density residential development. Since the T serves almost half of the 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth (we use Pilgrim-era names for everything around here), this was a way for the General Court (i.e., the state legislature) to exert control over questions of land-use that are otherwise the purview of those localities. 

The merits of such requirements are not central to the case before the SJC, in which the town of Milton has refused to enact the regulations dictated by the T. Rather, it seems that by promoting the land-use policy indirectly, the legislature chose the wrong vehicle (again, pun intended) for its goals. 

An interesting facet of this case is that Milton was told it would be subject to certain penalties if it failed to act. As a community, Milton essentially said, "okay" and thought that accepting the penalty would be the end of the matter. It might very well be.  If so, the Judicial Court might be sending the General Court back to the proverbial drawing table.

Helene to Milton

I am not sure how I will conclude this post, but it is beginning as a place to gather a few items to share with my environmental geography class, as I spend the week of Hurricane Milton's landfall away from class. When we gather again, I will want to review a few things from a very eventful week.

A Very Strange Case of Climate Politics

Image: Anderson Design Group
Novella: Robert Louis Stevenson

This literary comparison came to me in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, the second to ravage Florida in as many weeks. I was listening to a briefing on C-SPAN that was led by Gov. Ron DeSantis. He and other officials detailed what was known of the damage, the federal, state, and local responses, and what was to be expected in coming hours and days. They mentioned lessons learned from prior experiences and provided very clear guidance based on those lessons. He exuded competence and compassion throughout the entire briefing. 

In the moment, he seemed to be exactly what Florida needed. But he bears some responsibility for that moment. All of us do to some degree, but he is working deliberately to make climate change more damaging. It makes no sense, because he knows better than anyone what the damage looks like. He has famously prohibited discussion of climate change by state employees. He has also vetoed measures that would have both lesson the state's contribution to climate change and increased the resilience of coastal areas. 

Federal Response

Among the many Federal resources assisting in the hurricane response are the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, both of which are part of NOAA -- an agency that Project 2025 seeks to privatize. Another important agency, of course, is FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Administration. To his discredit, DeSantis mentioned only the Florida equivalent in his remarks, downplaying its federal counterpart. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

I assume most readers are aware of the Federal agencies mentioned above, but an increasingly important one might be less familiar: the Department of Defense is increasingly dedicated to understanding and responding to the threats posed by climate change and to reducing its own contribution to that change. The point person for those efforts across all branches is Richard Kidd, who currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Environment and Energy Resilience. The DoD Climate Portal at WWW.CLIMATE.MIL points to the many facets of this commitment. 

This admittedly bureaucratic response arises from a very clear realization among military planners that coastal bases and other resources are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Moreover, as the largest single consumer of fossil fuels, the U.S. military contributes significantly to those risks. 

How We Survive

Pictured at left is radio host Kai Ryssdal, in a photo taken when he served in the Navy in Norfolk, Virginia in the 1980s. 

I have been listening to him on the program Marketplace for many years. This is essentially the only business and economics program I consider worth listening to. I only learned recently that he has a special interest in the role of the military in climate change, and is in the sixth season of How We Survive, which is a podcast devoted exclusively to this important topic. He suggests that the U.S. military has been devoting some attention to climate change since the 1950s -- before he and I were even born. (We are almost exactly the same age.) 

The Fallout

All of this matters because at the level of national politics, extremists who have been politicizing climate science for a long time are now doing the same with weather science. Some of those who once claimed that humans could not influence climate are claiming that humans are orchestrating weather events. Most notably, Marjorie Taylor Green has claimed that "they" have created recent hurricanes as a political tactic. This rhetoric has been amplified by her party's presidential candidate and has led to ordinary weather forecasters being the brunt of baseless claims and death threats.

For example: Threats against workers in North Carolina 

The tweet referenced above is from MTG 

Meanwhile, Zillow appeals to grownups 

Those who think the Federal response has been lacking should recall Hurricane Maria, when aid was deliberately withheld by then-president Trump. The parallels are striking: I know from personal experience that both Puerto Rico and Western North Carolina are characterized by extremely complex networks of roads and river valleys that make their residents particularly vulnerable to isolation during major storms. 

A/C Hamster Wheel

Geographers and other environmental scientists are aware of the problems associated with air conditioning, even as a growing number of us have become accustomed to its growing prevalence in the places we live, work, and play. I was, in fact, driving in an unnaturally cold car on a warm day when I heard a very cogent discussion on the radio program The Daily. 

In How Air Conditioning Conquered America, journalist Emily Badger explains how air conditioning has reshaped our landscapes, architecture, and daily routines -- and its complex interactions with climate change. It is both our refuge from warming temperatures and an increasing cause of those very warming trends. She further explains how the comfort it provides comes with greater vulnerability when systems fail -- as they more often do.

Image: Holly Pickett / NYT

Fortunately, she argues, cool comfort is as much a cultural expectation as a physical necessity. It is a condition that we created and one that we can begin to modify. 

I recommend this half-hour tutorial because it allows students of geography to start understanding how air conditioning is likely to interact with many of the other issues we study as we seek to build climate resilience. 

Dam Mammals

Beavers, that is! Yesterday my favorite librarian and I went with our dog to a café opening in Rutland, Massachusetts. (Read all about our friends at Coffeelands-Rutland on GeoCafes.) To make a proper outing of it, I looked for a place to walk the dog in Rutland, and found a section of the Massachusetts Central Rail Trail, appropriately located on Depot Street, where presumably there was once a depot. 

We rightly guessed that our dog Crumpet would enjoy this wide, shady walkway with us. She is shown here on a causeway between two ponds, one of which I later learned is named Thayer Pond. At the western edge of the pond, I noticed what looked like a beaver lodge, but I was confused. 

The pond is large and the railroad folks had built a causeway next to it over a century ago. I was guessing that the pond was about 10 acres, but checking Google Earth, I see it is more like 40. In any case, it seems it is much too big and too old to be formed by a beaver dam -- whose constructions tend to be on a smaller and more temporary scale.

(Note: the café we were visiting was too new to appear on the map. Coffeelands is at 249 Main Street in Rutland; tell them I sent you!)

In any case, that lodge was too far from the path for us to get a good look without some serious bushwhacking, so we stayed on the main path, and a minute later we saw a much smaller pond with a very definite beaver lodge on it!

Dead trees in standing water are another indicator of possible beaver action, since they are most likely to be upright only in the first few years after inundation. 

We could see the lodge pretty well from the main path. The dam was easy to see, but difficult to photograph. In this image, the dam is only evident by the fact that standing water is present to the left and not to the right.

Looking at the map, we can see that the lodge on the bigger pond is very close to an outlet known as Mill Brook, which is also the name of an inlet on its northeast corner. This is not only further evidence that beavers did not build the big pond, but also provides some insight to what this place must have been like a century or so ago. 

It seems that the lodge that first caught my eye is easily accessible from the unnamed pond just downstream of it. Easily accessible to beavers, that is!

Lagniappe: back to that first time

I should mention that my master's thesis involved in-depth measurements of 33 different artificial ponds in the vicinity of the Miami Whitewater River. I measured them on every available map and aerial photograph and I physically measured the sediment in them. So became fairly adept at identifying ponds and their dams, and can sometimes spot beaver ponds with confidence from New England highways, but I was in this region for 25 years without seeing any. 

So I was happy -- downright giddy -- to see a textbook example of a beaver dam in May 2022, when my favorite librarian and I were on the Vermont Inn to Inn Walking Tour. The dam was much easier to photograph.

This was such a treat -- I stood there transfixed for quite some while. 

Siegried in Vietnam

I endeavor to learn something new about coffee every day. *Today I got a very early start. I was grinding some excellent Honduran coffee during the opening seconds of BBC Witness History when I thought I heard coffee and Vietnam mentioned. 

East Germany's Coffee from Vietnam
9-minute radio interview

Đắk Lắk province

I do know a bit about the geography of coffee in Vietnam, but I had been missing a significant chapter of its history. BBC journalist Michael Rossi spoke with Siegfried Kaulfuß, an East German government official who had been instrumental in bringing 10,000 hectares (about 25,000 acres) of land in Dak Lak Province into production in the 1980s. 

I can be forgiven, perhaps, for not knowing about this important chapter in Vietnam's coffee history; even the Wikipedia article on the subject gives it only a brief mention and a link to a separate article. And although the project was huge, it accounts for less than two percent of the land now under coffee cultivation in Vietnam.

The story bears out a few things I knew about coffee in Vietnam -- it is indeed the second-largest producer of coffee, for example, but it was not a significant player in world markets prior to the 1980s. The interview emphasizes the role of a fellow centrally-planned (communist) state in its growth; my understanding is that significant investment from global capital was also involved.

I had a brief conversation a decade or so ago with a fellow who had been somewhat involved but was by then running an art gallery in Nantucket. He averred that the rapid expansion of coffee in Vietnam had been encouraged by the World Bank as part of an effort to reduce the country's political isolation by increasing its trade. 

This was despite the hypsometric and climatic challenges of growing coffee in this location. Although it is well within the global coffee belt, the temperatures are too high and the altitudes are too low for arabica coffee to be grown in most of the country, and even the lower-quality robusta requires an extraordinary amount of chemical inputs.

Back to the BBC. The interview mentions an aspect of Vietnam's coffee history that I did know, but a translation error puts its origins in the wrong century. The Wikipedia article above points to the correct timing. Rossi says that coffee cultivation dates to the French Revolution of 1789 but it really entered around the time of the French Invasion by Napoleon in 1857. This geographer notes that these are opposite kinds of events at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent in separate centuries. 

Another important part of the historic importance of Vietnam's rapid expansion into the global coffee market is that it now sits alongside Brazil as such a large producer that local conditions have global impact. A frost in Brazil has become a cliché as an example of a commodity price disruptor, since such an event can send prices of coffee up throughout the world. 

In 1999,  Vietnam had the opposite effect, with its rapid increase in production cratering prices worldwide and creating a coffee crisis that permanently altered the structure of the industry, especially in Central America. This April, a drought in Vietnam was having the effect as a Brazilian frost, contributing to a dramatic increase in the price of coffee futures. 

I should note that mainstream economists and the journalists who follow them tend to pay attention to the industry only when a rapid increase in price is occurring, even though the industry itself uses futures markets to shift most of the financial risks to farmers themselves. 

*A note about timing: I started this blog post with enthusiasm but it has lingered as a set of open tabs for many weeks. In this context "today" means "about two months ago."

American Quilombo

Woodland Plantation
Photo: Debbie Elliot/NPR

This post is an invitation to learn about the largest uprising of enslaved persons in U.S. history, which took place in Louisiana in 1811. The uprising was organized among workers in captivity in several sugar plantations along the very lowest reaches of the Mississippi River, downstream of New Orleans. 

I learned about this place and its story from journalist Debbie Elliott's interview with twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner. They are descendants of these plantations who led the effort to return this property to black ownership and to launch a new form of plantation tourism that is honest about the terrible history of these beautiful buildings. The story link includes the six-minute audio and abundant links to continue exploring this important history. The Banner sisters and their colleagues are telling a complex and layered history that connects many facets -- up to the present patterns of environmental injustice -- to the original sins of this land.

The revolt was initially successful, with the takeover of Woodland Plantation. The uprising continued, with its participants working their way along the river toward New Orleans. Their progress was soon ended by local militias and the U.S. Army, which was not to fight against slavery until another half century had passed. The brutality of slavery is illustrated by the medieval cruelty of the response.

Despite teaching a course about New Orleans for the past several years, I have not yet been to the city. When I do go, I now know that I will need to spend a couple of days to the south, in the lodgings available at Woodland. 

The word quilombo that I use in the title of this post is somewhat misplaced, but it came to me when I heard the first few seconds of the broadcast story. It is a Brazilian term for the usually small, very remote settlements of people who had escaped slavery. When I first heard that the Woodland Plantation story was about the largest uprising against slavery in the United States, my mind went immediately to these communities in Brazil. Although organizers of this uprising hoped to establish something like a quilombo in New Orleans, it was not to be. 

The pedestrian option in Google Maps gives some sense of the scale of the travel these revolutionaries were attempting. 

Lagniappe

Almost immediately after I posted this, an online friend asked if I had read How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, the first non-fiction book by New Orleans poet Clint Smith. I am very surprised that I had not heard of this 2021 publication, which has been very enthusiastically received by reviewers on Goodreads, whose description begins:

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

This work spans several centuries and thousands of miles. We are looking forward to reading the audio edition, read by the author himself. Often a professional actor does better readings than the authors can do, but this audio version comes recommended, and I look forward to hearing this important work in the voice of a poet. 

São Vicente Paisagens

 Landscapes of São Vicente 

My colleagues and friends from the Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies at my university recently asked me to collaborate in the development of a travel course to São Vicente, one of the ten major islands of Cape Verde. The course would be an exploration environmental geography, linguistics, and of course music. We had recently completed a very successful course about coffee on the island of Fogo, so I eagerly accepted the invitation and we have begun our planning. 

(Note: I always have extra energy for planning future courses, especially travel courses!)

As with all of Cape Verde's islands, São Vicente is young (geologically speaking) and originated as a hotspot volcano. It is considered inactive, meaning that it has not erupted since the emergence of humans.

Map source: Natural Hazards in Sao Vicente (Cabo Verde) by Bruno Martins et al

As the caption indicates, the elevation map above is from an article about the hazards found on the island; these include various kinds of erosion that are made more likely by the interactions of topography, soil structure, and climate. 

Our course will examine those erosion risks and other climate-related risks common to small islands. and will also focus on the marine ecology of surrounding waters. We will explore both the threats to that ecology and the admirable work being done to protect it, particularly through the efforts of our friends at Biosfera in Mindelo. The work of Biosfera is a major part of A Tale of Two Capes, an online museum exhibition completed by Carolyn King, a recent BSU graduate. 

The other partner in the travel course will be Dr. João Rosa, an accomplished linguist who first proposed this collaboration. He has some interesting ideas about the interaction between Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole (Kriolu) that he wants to explore in a geographic context. Linguistics was my area of study before I became a geographer and I completed a course in Kriolu with Dr. Rosa a few years ago. So I am very excited to explore the island with him through a linguistic lens.

Music is an important part of cultural geography everywhere, but it seems especially to be the case in Cape Verde, where each island is home both to several distinct musical traditions and to a variety of contemporary artists. Among the former morna is probably the most important genre, and Mindelo was the home of Cesária Évora, its most important performer. We will certainly be making the most of the opportunity to visit her home island.

Among the latter are producers of music videos who really help geography learners by their rich incorporation of the cultural landscape. One example is Khaly Angel and his 2022 production Mindel (Mindelo -- below); another is Ariah by Jenifer Solidade.

We are very fortunate indeed that our other collaborator in offering this course is Angelo Barbosa, who directs our Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies and who also has helped to create the definitive museum of Cape Verdean music, which is fully online.

Brazil Marks a Dire Anniversary

The World is a daily production of Public Radio International (PRI) whose simple name perfectly captures what it provides: an ongoing education about this complicated planet. This week, I was surprised (though I should not have been) to hear a reporter sign off from one of my favorite places: the Brazilian island city of Florianópolis. This was a sweeping, national story, however, set mostly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

Protests in São Paulo, April 2023 Photo: Andre Penner

The story is about the annual commemoration of the 1964 coup, in which the Brazilian military removed President Goulart from office. This began a two-decade period of military dictatorship in Latin America's largest country. Unlike many other authoritarian regimes that were led by a single, outrageous character, this period was characterized by a series of bureaucratic-authoritarian governments whose individual leaders are rarely mentioned.

The immediate past president of Brazil had been complicit in the tyranny of those decades, however, making this anniversary very relevant to the rise and fall of Jair Bolsonaro and his continued relevance, even in defeat.

This blog has several posts with more information about the 1964 - 1985 period in Brazil and the U.S. support for some of those authoritarian regimes. My 2013 post Creative Resistance introduces the song and I discuss the U.S. role in the 2014 Overcoming Condor post.

Lagniappe 

Terry Gilliam's 1985 dystopian comedy Brazil never makes direct reference to the country, but it was released just as democracy returned to the country, and is a satire about bureaucratic-authoritarian (BA) regimes of all kinds, and they ways (known in Brazil as jeito) that ordinary people find to work around them. It is very instructive for those working in more benign BA circumstances, such as universities, state governments, or state universities. 

Modest Relief

NPR's coverage of the latest effort to reduce student-loan debt got some things right: Congress and the courts are making any such relief difficult and such relief programs benefit the entire economy. 

But then the discussion turned toward the "moral hazard" of such programs. Steve Inskeep is a good journalist, so I was surprised to hear him just nodding along with the secretary's nonsense talking points. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

]I was not surprised to hear Sec. Cardona blame universities for the student-debt crisis, but I expected Steve Inskeep to point out the important role of state governments. Instead, he agreed with the Secretary's language of "moral hazard" as if universities just enjoy raising prices. 

Since the days of Reagan and Clinton, public-sector higher education has been under attack by both parties, shifting the 80/20 sharing of costs that people of my age enjoyed to the 20/80 (at best) sharing that exists today. Public universities are public in name only these days; we get a sliver of our budget from public funds, with students paying/borrowing most of what it takes to run a school.

This is why the anti-intellectual language of "ROI" has gained such traction, even among smart people like Mr. Inskeep.

Sir EGGOT

I remember where I was when I first saw this album. Even the name of the album seemed a bit transgressive to the sheltered kid I was at the time.

My father's youngest brother and sister were still teenagers when Elton John released Madman Across the Water. According to my fuzzy memories, my brother and I were in the back yard of our grandparents' home listening to a transistor radio when we learned about the album itself -- I don't remember knowing of any other rock albums before this.

So this morning I treated myself to this jazzy rendition that he had played for BBC television a week after it was released, and presumably a couple of months before I learned about it.

The occasion was Sir Elton's latest honor, this time at the instigation of my country's top librarians. Long after being knighted and shortly after becoming only the 19th person to achieve EGOT status (Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony), the Librarians of Congress have granted Elton John and his writing partner Bernie Taupin its prestigious Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Named for George and Ira Gershwin, the first honoree was Stevie Wonder. Joni Mitchell was the most recent winner, and the tribute performance of Big Yellow Taxi was captivating.

As of this writing, even the Gershwin Prize page at LOC does not yet divulge the news, which I learned early this morning from NPR journalist Neda Ulaby. who clearly enjoyed telling the story and who gets credit for the EGGOT acronym.

Words & Music: Bernie & Elton
Photo: Loic Venance

Cabo Verde Photos

This embedded slideshow is the best way I know to share all of the photos from my recent travel course in Cape Verde. This is captured from my Fogo 2024 album on Flickr, which is another way to view the same images and to capture them individually (with attribution, please). To view below, simply click < or > and click on the ... at the bottom to expand text. 

As those who know about my teaching are aware, I use coffee as a way to learn more about geography and geography as a way to learn about coffee. As I mentioned to a friend recently, coffee is the wedge -- we are always going to learn about a lot of things when we study it as geographers!

Background: In January 2024, I was delighted to travel to Cape Verde to co-lead my 16th international travel course and my first one since going to Costa Rica in January 2020 just before the world closed. I  always use the term "co-lead" even though I have been the academic instructor of record for all of these journeys. For most of my courses in Central America, I have relied on the expert guidance of Matagalpa Tours. 

For this visit to Cape Verde, I worked closely with experts on my own campus before, during, and after the travel -- just as I had done for the sustainability tour I led there in 2006. This time my colleagues at BSU's Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verean Studies developed this program with me over the past five years, introducing me to some of the people we were to meet on the journey.

For all of these classes, we have also relied heavily on our Office of Study Abroad to promote the courses, organize the travel, and provide assistance from home during travel. The success of these courses really do depend on many collaborators, especially those who welcome us to their home communities where group travel may not yet be commonplace. 

During the course, I gave public lectures about the geography of coffee to audiences that included our own BSU students, local high school students, local dignitaries, the general public, and some experts who are themselves involved in coffee or coffee research. The idea was to provide some. context for a global industry that many in the audience already understood from an intimate, local level. Slides from these presentations are provided on the Café no Fogo post on my Coffee Maven blog, along with materials presented by Carolyn King, a recent BSU graduate who has done remarkable work on connections between Cape Verde and Cape Cod.

This led to exactly the kinds of exchanges of insights that I was hoping to have, and prepares us for further collaboration in the future. The constraints of our academic calendar caused us to take this trip during a relatively quiet time of the year for local coffee activities; I look forward to returning when the harvest and processing are more active.

Lagniappe 

I have more to say about the background and significance of this journey in a draft article I have written for the Pedro Pires Institute newsletter.

Îles de France

50 Largest Islands of France
(Click to enlarge)

A fellow geographer recently shared this graphic representing the geography of French islands. As with any map, the cartographer has made some choices, in this case depicting shape and size correctly but ignoring distance and location. 

A nod toward location is made, however, by shading the islands according to the oceans. and seas in which they are found. Even though some of these islands are considered "Antarctic Lands," they are not in the Southern Ocean which begins about 10 degrees further south. 

The largest of these islands is a bit bigger than Connecticut; the smallest is about half the size of Manhattan. 

I appreciate this map, but followers of this blog will know that I cannot resist making a Google map whenever I see a spatial list of this kind. The combination of perspectives is, I think, instructive.