While in Arkansas last month I visited the Forrest L. Wood Crowley’s Ridge Nature Center just south of Jonesboro. Their website is here. My father had been telling me about it since it opened last year, knew I’d enjoy it, and got us out to see it right away. Based on his description and with …
Author: Reid Farmer
The Chumash, Swordfish, and Rock Art
The swordfish (Xiphias gladius) occupied a prominent role in the religion of the prehistoric Chumash, a coastal and island people of Southern California. I have posted about the Chumash before here a few times. Living near the Pacific as they did, the Chumash believed that the ocean and the land were complementary worlds and that …
Waiting for Condor
Steve and I chuckled over the LA Times article that appeared with this beautiful photograph. The entire piece is centered around a field trip by a group of birders to see condors – which never show up – giving the whole thing sort of a “Waiting for Godot” quality. Generally it does give a pretty …
Very Old Rock Art Revisited
The image above from Utah may look familiar to you as I blogged about it here a couple of months ago as one of the very few possible images of Pleistocene megafauna (a proboscidean) from North American rock art. After posting this I sent copies of this image to two nationally-recognized, heck, internationally-recognized rock art …
Cupules and Geophagy
A common form of prehistoric rock-art here in California is the cupule. These are shallow round depressions ground into a rock face, usually in no particular pattern. Here is a picture of my colleague Bryon Bass next to a rock covered with cupules. This location is in Kern County in the foothills of the Tehachapi …
A Ghost of Evolution
A fascinating book that Steve introduced me to is Connie Barlow’s Ghosts of Evolution. The essential biological truth that forms the book’s basis is that many plant species evolve in concert with “partner” animal species that serve as agents to disperse the plants’ seeds. The evolutionary strategy is that the plants evolve fruits that appeal …
Iola Reid, RIP
My maternal grandmother, Iola Wilkinson Reid, died on October 1, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. She was 97 and had been in a nursing home, mentally lost and physically declining for the last five years. She really had been miserable and suffering in the home and though I was very close to her and miss her, I …
Lost Airman – Modern Iceman
The LA Times carried pieces yesterday and today telling the intriguing story of a body found last Sunday in a glacier in Kings Canyon National Park here in California. The location is on the slopes of Mt. Mendel, a 13,710 foot peak located southwest of Bishop. It is believed to be the body of a …
Ramen – Now and Then
This article in the LA Times discusses the booming sales of instant ramen noodles in Mexico. Traditionalists are horrified that ramen is displacing the consumption of beans and rice, the historic food of the poor in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by cultural change as shown in food consumption “tipping points” such as the …
Anasazi Kiva Abandonment
Steve and Chas Clifton at nature blog posted here and here about a fascinating article in the High Country News that discussed a snake skeleton found on the floor of a kiva in the Mesa Verde area, apparently part of a ritual performed at the time the structure was abandoned. It was really a very …