I am a long time reader of Hemingway and others of that time, long ago when fiction was being created for a modern audience. Gertrude Stein is my hero.........
I just reread Big Two Hearted River and realized that Hemingway might have been born with a silver spoon, but he and I had quite similar life experiences.
So, I wrote the Ricky story to honor my childhood, my childhood friend, Ricky, and to purge my soul of thorns long prickling my side.
All you read happenend to me, just as the Nick Adam's stories happened in Hemingway's troubled youth. He and I lost our souls to trout, rivers, and troubled times. I plan to live out my life though. Having just ben in Ketchum, I feel a great sense of loss for his family, friends, and reading and writing public.
Maybe the best thing we can think is that it would have been nice if Hemingway had traded all his weapons for fly rods and spinning gear, he might not have gone out so violently?
If and when Tom Brokaw reads this, I hope Tom remembers when we met in Montana.........back when Tom had the golden opportunity to bring the world back to the best of times within the land and water scape of the last great place. That Kitteridge and Welch place where writers know heart and soul of white, brown, and red meet on an even playing field............lodge poles erected and salmonflies fluttering in the same even breeze of eternity.
Ron Hirschi Marrowstone Island, Washington. 2010. Just after a visit to Sacajawea's birthplace in the Salmon River Country of Idaho
04 August 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
X310 Plastic Ocean Activity
It's me, Fred, the Monkey.
If you look closely, you can see I wear X310's leg band around my neck. It's to remind me of her. She was a Laysan Albatross. She was born in March 2008 and lived on Pihemanu, one of the most remote atolls on earth, now part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
You can wonder about Pihemanu and about X310. She didn't live very long, dying in June 2008. Her parents flew thousands and thousands of miles finding food for her. But x310, like lots of baby albatrosses died before she got to soar the seas. Some albatrosses fly three million miles during their life. Like X310's parents, their sea is a new challenge in food finding because of our actions on land.
Adult albatrosses fly more than a thousand miles just to get a single meal for their babies. But the ocean is full of plastic. And if you read my buddy, Ron's blog and website, you learn about plastic in the sea. It is everywhere and babies like X310 die because they eat so much plastic, they can not get it out of their stomachs.
Where's all this plastic come from?
Where does it go?
Here is a simple activity:
Get up from your chair and walk around the classroom or wherever you are sitting.
Write down each thing around you that is made of plastic.
Everybody compare lists and make a total of the plastic products.
Now, the hard part of this activity:
Can you find alternatives for the things you use, alternatives not made of plastic?
Maybe start with drinking water from a fountain or glass or reuseable container?
Maybe start a really good recycling project?
Maybe make some art from recycled plastic?
Learn more on links here on this site and others.
Talk about times with no plastic.
X310 would have appreciated if people, just a few years ago had decided to make a plastic-free world for you....
You and X310.
Learn how you can SOAR with FRED by arranging a visit with Fred and his ocean teaching kit by emailing his banana provider at whalemail@waypoint.com
FEEDING A BABY ALBATROSS OCEAN ACTIVITY
What you need:
Pint size plastic beverage container with wide mouth (about 1.5 inches) ---This approximates the size of a baby albatross stomach and esophagus.
Important to have the lid too.
Enough plastic items (bottle caps, toothbrush, legos, fishing line, small chunks of nylon rope, markers, pens, more bottle caps and even a few more bottle caps since they are pretty much the most common marine debris.
Talk with your audience of kids of any age about ocean debris and the way adult albatrosses fly out a few hundred or even a thousand miles to find flying fish eggs and squid for the little ones. They return to Pihe Manu or up on the Northeast shore of Kauai, find their young one among thousands of others and begin to feed by regurgitating "food".......
As you talk about this, have the kids place one or two pieces of the plastic into the bottle.
Replace cap with each addition of plastic. Shake gently to mimic bird moving around the nesting area a bit.
Remove cap. Shake gently to mimic the bird trying to dislodge "food" that can not be digested. In a perfect ocean, this would be squid beaks, fish bones, or other natural pieces of food.
Add more plastic, repeating above until no plastic falls out of the bottle when cap is removed (bill is opened) and the bird tries and tries, but can not toss up the mass of debris. See how much and how many different kinds of plastic can be added. Does the rope tangle with the legos and bottle caps. Do five bottle caps cause a blockage in the esophagus???
In nature, the upchucked mass is like an owl pellet and is known as a bolus. Natural foods slip freely through the esophagus and more feeding can continue. Most times, a baby albatross will toss up one bolus before leaving the nesting island. Unfortunately, thousands die because plastic blocks the stomach completely.
Your feeding the baby albatross activity can lead to a lot of discussion of plastics we use, discard, then find their way into the ocean and into the mouth of a baby albatross.
If you want to have a Baby Albatross Feeding Kit, complete with some plastic items that actually came from once living albatross at Pihe Manu, Papahanaumokuakea, be in touch.
Pint size plastic beverage container with wide mouth (about 1.5 inches) ---This approximates the size of a baby albatross stomach and esophagus.
Important to have the lid too.
Enough plastic items (bottle caps, toothbrush, legos, fishing line, small chunks of nylon rope, markers, pens, more bottle caps and even a few more bottle caps since they are pretty much the most common marine debris.
Talk with your audience of kids of any age about ocean debris and the way adult albatrosses fly out a few hundred or even a thousand miles to find flying fish eggs and squid for the little ones. They return to Pihe Manu or up on the Northeast shore of Kauai, find their young one among thousands of others and begin to feed by regurgitating "food".......
As you talk about this, have the kids place one or two pieces of the plastic into the bottle.
Replace cap with each addition of plastic. Shake gently to mimic bird moving around the nesting area a bit.
Remove cap. Shake gently to mimic the bird trying to dislodge "food" that can not be digested. In a perfect ocean, this would be squid beaks, fish bones, or other natural pieces of food.
Add more plastic, repeating above until no plastic falls out of the bottle when cap is removed (bill is opened) and the bird tries and tries, but can not toss up the mass of debris. See how much and how many different kinds of plastic can be added. Does the rope tangle with the legos and bottle caps. Do five bottle caps cause a blockage in the esophagus???
In nature, the upchucked mass is like an owl pellet and is known as a bolus. Natural foods slip freely through the esophagus and more feeding can continue. Most times, a baby albatross will toss up one bolus before leaving the nesting island. Unfortunately, thousands die because plastic blocks the stomach completely.
Your feeding the baby albatross activity can lead to a lot of discussion of plastics we use, discard, then find their way into the ocean and into the mouth of a baby albatross.
If you want to have a Baby Albatross Feeding Kit, complete with some plastic items that actually came from once living albatross at Pihe Manu, Papahanaumokuakea, be in touch.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment