Thanks to Doctor Ogbuagu

This map depicts key points in the early life and education of Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, a researcher at Yale University known for his work on AIDS and more recently on Pfizer's vaccine for the Covid-19 Coronavirus.

Like many, I learned of his contribution from this tweet issued last week by the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria. The tweet is put in the context of Dr. Ogbuagbu's overall career in an article by journalist Haleem Olatunji on TheCable, a Nigerian online journal.

The story illustrates the importance of scientific cooperation in general and of the mobility of scholars across international borders. For many, it provides what might be surprising evidence of the high quality of medical education in a developing country. For me, it is a welcome story of diplomatic professionals doing what they do best: highlighting that which unites us.

Lagniappe: Biafra

I am glad I took a moment to map the places that were mentioned in Olatunji's article. For then it becomes clear that Dr. Obguagbu was raised and educated primarily in Biafra, a region whose attempt to secede from Nigeria was the crux of a civil war and the subject of Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel I have been reading with students in my course Africa: People, Resources, and Development. Reading that novel helps me to understand some of the quite negative replies I found under the aforementioned tweet -- the division in Nigeria is very much alive, a half century after the civil war.

Approximate boundaries of Biafra within Nigeria: Wikipedia

Climate Action and the Executive See-Saw

The U.S. Constitution neither defines nor precludes presidential executive orders, but every president since George Washington has issued at least one. The sole exception was William Henry Harrison, who died in office after only 31 days. In more recent presidencies, this would be ample time to issue orders, some of which are ready for a new president's signature before the Mayflower moving van has left the White House grounds on inauguration day.

Political observers now expect a sheaf of executive orders to be ready with each new administration because -- to some degree -- executive orders are sometimes made to be broken. This will certainly be the case with regard to executive action related to the environment in general and climate change in particular when the Biden Administration takes office on January 20, 2021.

Sadly, public policy is sometimes a game.
Image: Card Cow

A pair of recent segments from the public-radio program Living On Earth provide an overview of recent executive actions related to climate change and informed speculation about orders that may be issued just before and just after the moving vans arrive.

In March 2020, program host and environmental journalist extraordinaire Steve Curwood spoke with law professor Jody Freeman about the EPA's rush to rollback regulations before the election. The discussion draws on her experience as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama administration, to quickly describe the most important environmental protections that are at stake. 

This is good preparation for a segment that aired today, in which Curwood returns to the topic of executive orders with economist Joe Aldy, who served on President Obama's 2008-2009 transition team. They explore President-elect Biden's environmental priorities. Aldy's experience 12 years ago gives him keen insight into what the outgoing president is likely to do and what tools the incoming president has available -- including the degree to which control of the Senate will matter.

Lagniappe

Just as I was posting this, I found a more detailed description of President-elect Biden's climate-related transition plans by journalists and Adam Aton and Jean Chemnick. The intention to address climate in nearly every department of government suggests the need for interdisciplinary approaches to the deepening climate crisis.

Moving two families during a ceremony -- even a long ceremony -- is daunting, but it is done every 4 to 8 years in the People's House. I once read that Mayflower (which seriously botched the 1997 Hayes-Boh family move) was always hired, but a quick image search suggests that competent companies also get the job sometimes, as in the January 2001 move shown above.

Warm Heart of Malawi

The World Through a Lens is a weekly series of explorations provided by the photojournalists of the New York Times  as a welcome diversion from the isolation many are experiencing during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Malawians: What turned a single visit to Malawi into a lifetime connection.
Photo credit: Marcus Westburg

The contribution of Sweden's Marcus Westberg begins with a two-day assignment in Malawi that has turned into a relationship lasting most of his adult life. We went to the small village of Senga Bay to take photos 14 years ago, when a water-supply well (borehole) was being installed. He was soon captivated by the country, the people, and the lake that helps to define both.

Over time, he came to understand the phrase Malawians use to describe their culture: the warm heart of Africa. His photo essay is a treasure; and though it captures a single recent journey, both the words and the images are borne of a connection built over more than a decade.

Please enjoy the photographs Westburg shares with us; you will feel the warmth and the heart. You will also gain some insight into matters that are important in Malawi and throughout many other countries of the African continent.

I am always intrigued by the map of Malawi -- the country and its eponymous inland sea are almost the same shape. 

BONUS: For his second entry in the NYT series, Westburg shares his experiences in and along the Luangwa River of Zambia. In this case, humans are not his focus: these photos are all about the charismatic megafauna.

Frolicking hippos -- their name is from the Greek for "river horse."
Photo: Marcus Westburg. 

If you like Westburg's work -- and how can you not? -- consider following his social-media links at the bottom of the article.

Lagniappe

I am grateful for Westburg's essay because he so beautifully conveys something similar to my own experiences in a couple different places. My choice of a human-centered photo and my awkward caption about finding Malawians in Malawi are deliberate. In 2006 --- around the same time as Westburg's first visit to Malawi -- I went to Nicaragua with the intention of leading a coffee tour there one time, and moving on to another coffee country the next year. I have taken more than 100 people there during 12 visits so far, and I am in touch with someone from Nicaragua almost every day. In turn, many of those 100 people who went with me for a single visit have returned and built long-term relationships. The reason: we did not just meet Nicaragua; we met Nicaraguans.

Maritime Hermitages

Environmental geography is concerned with understanding environmental problems, of course, but it is also about appreciating places. Photojournalist Alex Ingraham has spent some time visiting the very small islands of coastal Great Britain, meeting the caretakers who in many cases are the sole inhabitants. 

The laboratories, guest quarters, and library of Skokholm, Wales.
Image: NY Times Photojournalist Alex Ingram

They get to know some remote places in a very intimate way, and through Ingraham's lens and narrative, we are given glimpses of these remarkable places and the rewards and tribulations of an isolated lifestyle. 

I cannot help but wonder when there might be an opening as warden of Skokholm, which has two people and one library. I think it would be a good retirement job for my favorite librarian and me to share. 

Lagniappe

This essay is part of The World Through a Lens -- a weekly series of explorations provided by the New York Times  as a welcome diversion from the isolation many are experiencing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Belle Isle Memorial

  

Belle Isle -- Beautiful Island Indeed

In the middle of the Detroit River -- between the Detroit waterfront and the Riverside Drive in Windsor, Ontario -- Belle Isle is a small island beloved by the people of Detroit. 

It was therefore the perfect place to memorialize Detroiters who have been lost to the Coronavirus pandemic. It seems especially fitting that the memorial would take the same form as many other ceremonies this year -- a car parade. 

Lagniappe

Near the end of the story, people wax nostalgic about the radio program of Martha Jean McQueen. Her prayerful pronouncements voiced over the music of Rev. James Cleveland are typical of the excerpts I could find online. 

EVOnline at NERC 2020 - Join us Nov 2

 

The EarthView team is proud to be part of the NERC 2020 online conference for social studies educators throughout the northeastern United States and beyond. The 50th anniversary of this illustrious gathering is taking place fully online. EarthView has been featured at several real-world NERC meetings, and we are very happy to continue the tradition.

As the awkward staging of the welcome message above suggests, Covid-19 safety was a key consideration as we made EVOnline field trip that will be part of our session on Monday, November 2. Please join us -- registration is free but is required by October 26 (one week in advance). 

The webinar session begins with a "field trip" comprising about a dozen brief presentations using the EarthView globe and some of our EarthMap giant floor maps. This will be followed by a discussion of the use of such maps in learning geography and social studies, with Q&A moderated by Andrea Weng, the president of our BSU Geography Club. We will conclude with our team's recommendation of resources for online learning at all levels.

A link to the entire presentation will be made available on this blog post after the event; it will include links to individual segments of the field trip, for use in classrooms and by those teaching and learning at home.

See the NERC 2020 page for registration and the World Beyond Borders page for details our session. Please register (for free) by October 26 to receive the Zoom link for our session and to arrange for PDP credits if needed. 

Ten Shillings, Six Pence: 10/6

My favorite librarian habitually checks the National Day calendar, looking for things that might be fun to celebrate, and this often inspires special meals in our household. It also leads to odd discoveries, such as the Mad Hatter Day.

Chapeleiro Maluco

The "holiday" began in Colorado in 1986, simply as an excuse for "crazy" or whimsical behaviors, especially involving the wearing of hats. When I posted this photo online, a friend in Brazil immediately commented with the Portuguese version of the term, and some virtual chuckles followed.

As detailed in a Mad Hatter Day article in the Panache section of Economic Times, the manic character is associated with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, though he never used that exact name for his character the Hatter. The article explains why today's date is used to celebrate the character. 

It errs, however, in associating the "madness" of haberdashers with their use of lead; mercury was the real culprit, as mentioned in the video above. It is an easy mistake to have made: both are metals known to be neurotoxins, and in reality the toxicity of mercury is gravely serious. In fact, I am justifying the time I am spending on this blog post by the fact that I am sharing it with my Environmental Regulations class later this morning. We will make some comparisons between mercury and dichlordiphenyltrichloroethane, which we have been studying for the past few weeks. 

Mercury and DDT are different in many ways, but both are subject to biomagnification in fatty tissue and were in use for decades before their toxicity was understood. Both exemplify the limitations of free markets when managing environmental risks.

Coffee Creek Quality

 
One-minute excerpt of S5E1 of Schitt's Creek, a fair-use clip for educational purposes. May be blocked in some locations; may not be used on monetized sites.

"Coffee Movie!" or "Library Movie!" are expressions we use in the Hayes-Boh household to express our joy when encountering our favorite subjects in a film or a television show. A fantasy sabbatical project of mine, for example, would be to string together all of the coffee references in M*A*S*H; my favorite librarian even has a television tag for entries in her famous "Library" Books blog.

Our pandemic television roster now includes Schitt's Creek, a series to which we are late arrivals. The low-brow veneer covers some rather clever humor in a series that is essentially an inversion of The Beverly Hillbillies. Some scenes are set in a café, but the one that caught our attention takes place in the lobby of the very modest motel that is more central to the series. 

John first mentions coffee as nothing more than a caffeine vehicle -- fuel for a tired person. Stevie tries to discourage him, suggesting that even his low expectations of quality will not be met. 

Coffee quality matters, even when expectations are low. Coffee passes through 50 or more steps from seed to cup, and choices at each step affect quality. Sometimes I can tell that nearly every step went awry.

On June 26 of this year, I was pleased to be part of a wide-ranging discussion of coffee quality with two worker-owners of one of my favorite coffee companies: Equal Exchange. This was a public presentation via Zoom, for citizen-consumers all over the United States. If you have not already seen it, I invite you to watch the archive video, as we talk about the positive correlation between the relationships with farmers and the final quality in the cup. 

I provide links and put the discussion in context with two separate blog posts -- Fair Trade on my Aw, Professor blog and Micro Quality on this one. 

Virtual Café

I try to learn something new about coffee every day. Friends who grow coffee or are otherwise involved in the coffee industry often help to make this happen -- as do those who have studied coffee with me. Sometimes they recommend a new café or ask me a question to which I do not know the answer. Most recently it was a coffee alum sharing this video and asking "what is this contraption?"

@quincylk

Your 4th @ owes you a coffee at ##QuincysTavern! ☕️☺️ ##quincys ##coffee ##asmrtiktoks ##asmr ##asmrvideo ##goodvibes ##dnd ##dungeonsanddragons ##cottagecore

♬ Wouldn't It Be Nice - Ukulele Version - Acoustic Guitar Revival

I had never seen one of these, but told her that it is similar to a vacuum press. These are more popular in Japan than in the U.S., though I do have one. It is shown in somewhat improper use in the 1961 "This Is Coffee" video that I show in my classes. But this is clearly more complicated -- on my second viewing I realized that it is, among other things, a steampunk variant on the usual model.

To learn more, I decided to find the café online. For a while, my endeavors were quite confusing. Eventually, I learned that the cafè is an extension of an elaborate persona developed by the barista shown above. The Dungeons & Dragons reference is not immediately clear, but to those whose misspent youth included countless hours gathered around graph paper "dungeons" and rolling dice, the elaborate nature of this faux café does seem a reasonable outgrowth of the game. 

I don't think we I can replicate this coffee, though I'm sure one of my industry friends will tell me if I can. Meanwhile, the virtual tavern is a delightful place to visit for wit and insight on many topics. 

Lagniappe

As I was closing some of the many open tabs in my browser, I noticed that my search for "vacuum press" has also revealed the name of this contraption. It is a balance syphon coffee maker and it is available from a certain global retailer. I will see if it is available elsewhere before I decide whether to add one to my fleet of coffee makers.

Not So Long Ago

 

The image above has been circulating online this year. If someone can tell me the original source, I would love to add a citation. I could spend the rest of this week commenting on it, because it relates to so much of what is wrong in the United States today. I will, in fact, no doubt be editing this post. 

But for now I am using it to refer to one of the many ways in which the "get over it" response to racial injustice is wrong: the practice of redlining. I have heard the term for many years, but learned only recently that maps were published with actual red lines on them. The importance of this practice is included in a PowerPoint file posted by Shane Wiegand for the Landmark Society.

More specifically, a digital atlas of such maps has been published as Mapping Inequality by the University of Richmond. This is a very important resource that details the practice and allows users to see how specific urban neighborhoods were characterized for the purpose of lending authorities during the 1930s. It is impossible to suppose that such stark definitions of desirable and undesirable neighborhoods could be without consequence today.