Glaciers and grizzlies (MM No. 35)

Hey friends,

I write to you from atop a glacier, a day after spotting a grizzly bear and her two cubs, in one of the most stunning regions I’ve encountered. Highly recommend visiting the Banff/Jasper area if you have not yet, for the lakes and views and lovely, lovely natural beauty. Our first few days were wet, chilly, and cloudy, but the mercurial fog only made the mountains that much more magical. Happy to send photos if anyone is curious :) I’m tempted to take a season to work in Banff, but not sure how that fits in with the whole grad school situation.

Other assorted updates… I’ve been trying to get back into reading more regularly, but my free time has been also occupied with puzzles and music. On one long mountain drive, I designed my very first (cryptic) crossword! I got a new bike now that I’m getting a little better at navigating and am excited to take some rides in the near future.

What have you been up to at summer’s end? Any book or travel recs?

Cheers,

Maya

Links

• An exploration of envy in female relationships: “There’s something gorgeously petty about many women’s lives. They’re not trying to be great. They’re trying to be better.”
• Architectural Uprising, a Nordic social media movement, objects to the “continued uglification” of developments and buildings. I concur with their cause — see the photos for yourself.
• Good movies restyled as old books by artist Matt Stevens.
• This guy traveled to every country in the world without flying.
• In support of the non-capital N, capital P National Parks across the states
• A database of paper airplanes with instructions for how to fold them (the new paper crane in my life?)
• Cool art cool art cool art
• I’m a sucker for videos like this, even if there’s a 98% chance they’re all staged (what happens when you meet singers in a café)

Books

• What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? — Vinciane Despret, transl. by Brett Buchanan
  • Written by a Belgian author, so going to count this as my Belgium book
  • Philosophical musings on what it means to be an animal (and thus, what it means to be human). I appreciated the diverse cast of philosophers that Despret drew from, and the way she made very intangible concepts come to life. She made me think deeply about the true connotation behind the words we use in research, particularly at the organismal scale.
  • “…animals learn, in play, to be responsible, that is, to respond. They learn to respect, to hold in regard, as the etymology suggests. This is what animals do. Concretely. Morality is incredibly funny and serious, profoundly joyous and grave.”
  • “The American philosopher William James borrowed a line from Hegel when he wrote ‘the aim of knowledge is to divest the objective world of its strangeness, and to feel ourselves more at home in it.’”
  • “The nature of farming is to aim to have two worlds cohabit in the most intelligent way possible.” — Jocelyne Porcher
• A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn
  • Started rereading this and couldn’t get past the first 9 chapters. Sorry.
• American Prometheus — Kai Bird
  • [The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer]
  • “I find the work hard, thank God, and almost pleasant.”
  • “Einstein is completely cuckoo.”
  • “Bohr was God and Oppie was his prophet.”
  • “The guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.”
  • … only great sinners can become great saints.”
• Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner
  • “I want to live in their clothes for awhile, if only so I do not have to live in my own.”