If you don’t know what to do, and are always in the dark, living in a powder keg, and giving off sparks, it is entirely possible, as Bonnie Tyler so eloquently observed, that you may in fact be experiencing a total eclipse of the heart.
Eclipses
Newly Noted Books
New and forthcoming books that are worthy of attention but that have not yet been fully reviewed.
Darwin’s Insectivorous Plants
“During the summer of 1860, I was surprised by finding how large a number of insects were caught by the leaves of the common sun-dew (Drosera rotundifolia) on a heath in Sussex. I had heard that insects were thus caught, but knew nothing further on the subject.”
So begins Charles Darwin’s book “Insectivorous Plants,” published in 1875, following fifteen years of work and study; a book that from its very first lines to its last testifies to the inexhaustible patience and curiosity of one of the world’s greatest naturalists. It is also a book, I am embarrassed to write, the existence of which I was wholly unaware until rather recently.
Under the Stars
As mammals, we’re something of an anomaly. Most of our mammalian kindred species are well suited to, and indeed orient their lives around, the night. We humans, on the other opposable thumb equipped hand, have evolved – particularly in regard to our visual acuity – to fare much better in daylight. Therefore we have done all we can to make sure that those things that go bump in the night, as well as the more stealthy ones that don’t, aren’t concealed from us.
The Saguaro Cactus
It is difficult to imagine a more evocative botanical symbol of the Sonoran desert than the Saguaro cactus. Towering above other plants and animals around it, branching arms raised toward the sky in a posture reminiscent of the human gesture of both prayer and blessing, this giant of the Cactaceae family hold pride of place in both the ecology, as well as the mythology of post pre- and post-colonial human inhabitants, of the region.