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9 October 2017
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass is a collection of thematically-linked essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an environmentalist, academic, and Native American. The themes that unite them are plants, the human relationship to the natural world, and love. I’ve read Kimmerer’s essays in Orion before, but there’s a sort of literary force multiplier when you get a whole book full of her thoughtful insights, story after story, back to back. Braiding Sweetgrass is a …
18 August 2015
The Revenant, by Michael Punke
On the recommendation of my friend Troy Holland, I just finished reading Michael Punke’s novel about Hugh Glass. The book has been optioned as a film, and because it stars Leonardo diCaprio, it will doubtless be a hit. What got Troy’s attention, though, is the director: Alejandro González Iñárritu, the guy who gave us Babel, Birdman, and Amores Perros, all of which were masterful films. So what’s a ‘revenant?’ Wikipedia’s …
1 January 2013
Vulture petroglyph from Castle Gardens, Wyoming
Happy new year! Time marches on – and here’s a reminder of times past… Check this out – a couple of what appear to be vultures, etched by native Americans into the siltstone at Castle Gardens, Wyoming: Diameter of the outer circle is probably 1.5 or 2 feet. My annotated (and generally embelished) version: I love the “hunched” shoulders on these birds, and their expressionless faces. What’s the small inner …
25 April 2010
Larry Wiseman is my hero
I have many heroes, but the one I would like to pay tribute to today is Larry Wiseman, my mentor through my undergraduate years at William & Mary and beyond. Now, Larry is a biologist, not a geologist — but he probably did more to frame my life’s work than any other individual. At William & Mary, Larry was chair of the biology department, and taught the first semester intro …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.