Bubbles within a Great Bubble

It reads like a modern parable, even though all the details come from newspaper archives.  In September of 1991, eight men and women, outfitted in blue jumpsuits, made an appearance before an excited press.  The small team was about to embark upon an experiment -- not going into space, but entering a human-made ecosystem called Biosphere 2.  Sunlight would enter the glass windows of the 3-acre complex of domes and pyramids.  But other than that solar intervention, Biosphere 2 was designed to grow its own food, create its own oxygen naturally, and filter its wastewater through the soil for purification.  A New York Times headline described it as a "Man-Made World."  An ABC news program held out the hope that the project might "save the world" -- because after all, Biosphere 2 would be sealing out the environmentally damaged, polluted world that the Earth had become.  The team in jumpsuits entered the Biosphere, and the airlock was sealed.

Any sci-fi writers worth their salt would know what should happen next if this were to be made into a Hollywood movie:  Competitiveness, jealousies, and sexual attractions would emerge among members of the team.  One member would turn into a Captain Bligh, fomenting a mutiny among the crew, who had been wanting the bountiful Biosphere to be an enchanted island of Tahiti.

As it turned out, the real Biosphere 2 soon had problems of a more ecological nature.  Even though its sealed world had included a miniature rainforest, coral reefs, and numerous species of animals, growing crops was difficult.  The team had to break into an emergency 3-month food supply they had kept a secret.  Despite that surreptitiousness, reporters discovered that deliveries were being made to the Biosphere twice a month -- seeds, vitamins, and mousetraps.  Mice were not the only pest needing controlling.  There were also cockroaches (no surprise), and nematode worms and mites attacking the crops.  Moreover, the honeybees and hummingbirds that were to have pollinated the crops had died.

Of more immediate danger, a surge of bacteria was reducing the oxygen level to such a point that it was as if the team were living at an altitude of 14,000 feet.  A truckload of liquid oxygen had to be called in and sprayed into the Biosphere.

As the ecologist Rebecca Stewart summarized it, “The Biosphere 2 experiment failed to generate sufficient breathable air, drinkable water and adequate food for just eight humans, despite an expenditure of $200 million.”  The bubble had burst.  Reflecting upon our scientific knowledge, the scientists Joel Cohen and David Tilman wrote:

“No one yet knows how to engineer systems that provide humans with
 the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free.”

A rare look at a rare planet

A century earlier, it was the idea of a much more immense "bubble" that had initially prompted the word "biosphere."  In the 1800's, scientists had coined that word to refer to the network of integrated living species, from microscopic to large, that surround the Earth.  In 1926, the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky published a book about this living "skin" that surrounds our planet. The living beings in the biosphere not only draw upon the chemical elements of the Earth and air;  they also re-create the oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.

We must marvel at what this Earth-Bubble, our home, can do.  But we might also draw upon the failed bubble-world of Biosphere 2 to ask if there isn't an intangible "bubble' we sometimes live in.  When we live in our high-tech human-made world without an awareness of how it is being sustained by the systems of Nature, are we not living in a mental bubble?  The danger of such a mental bubble is why our faith-traditions have cultivated prayers of gratefulness to use upon awakening, before eating, and when going to sleep, awaiting the sun's next rising.

~ ~ ~

(Do you have a way of remembering Nature in an appreciative way?  What is it?)

(Quotations and details are taken from "The Lost History of One of the World’s Strangest Science Experiments"
 by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times, March 29, 2019.)
(The picture of Biosphere 2 and of the Earth are used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licenses.
 The picture of the nomad is in the public domain because of its age.)

Obliging Animals

As I drove home, I was debating in my head what I was going to do to resolve a problem I had encountered upon leaving home a few hours earlier.  Quite soon after exiting my driveway in the morning, I had noticed a dead opossum in the middle of the street.  It had most likely been struck by a car the night before, because its lifeless body was still intact even though surrounded by a swarm of flies.  And so, as I drove back home after running my errands, I wondered what I was going to do about that unpleasant dead animal on my suburban street. Trying to shovel it up to put it in the trash would be difficult by myself, especially given all the flies.  I had a vague recollection that one of the city's many phone numbers was listed as "Dead Animals," but in a sprawling city of a few million people, how long would it take for the overburdened city servants to respond to one small, dead animal?  What was I going to do?

As I turned the corner onto the street where I live, I was pleased to see that the problem had been taken care of by some obliging, non-human animals: Four vultures were by the street's curb, two of them picking at what little was left of the corpse.  The nicely-designed hooks on the tips of their beaks enabled them to easily tear off bite-sized pieces of meat.

I was struck by the contrast between my previously anxious mind about how to solve a problem and the relaxed casualness of the vultures.  They reminded me of a group of human diners at a Chinese restaurant who, after sharing a large meal, are in no hurry to leave, and so enjoy lingering together.  Two of them were still nibbling, while the other two lingered with the nibblers.

I do not know where the four vultures had been residing before they spotted the dead opossum.  But my appreciating how obliging they were in solving my clean-up problem led to my recalling the mob of flies that had been swarming around the corpse a few hours earlier.  Although distasteful to me, they too had been beginning Nature's disposal of the dead animal, even if in a much slower fashion.

How numerous are the species of animals that obligingly help us humans! (And here I am thinking of animals other than those who are coerced into becoming meat on our dinner plates.)  Such animals as bees that make honey, some of which we snitch.  And the many kinds of other insects that pollinate our fruit and nut trees.  Also, the earthworms that help rejuvenate the life-giving soil.  The list goes on at length.

Flies.  Vultures.  Bees.  Insects.  Worms.  These are all among the "Living Things We Love to Hate," as Des Kennedy expresses it in his book's title.  Nevertheless, such obliging animals, going about their own business, make our human work, recreation, and even lives possible.  We can be thankful for that.

~ ~ ~

Can you think of any other animals that help us in easily overlooked ways?

(The book mentioned is Living Things We Love to Hate: Facts, Fantasies & Fallacies by Des Kennedy, © 1992, 2002.)

Wild and Free?

Under other circumstances, I might not have given a second thought to the single word "free."  After all, it was used in a common type of statement:  In an anthology of nature-writing, Words for the Wild, the editor Ann Ronald introduced an essay by Loren Eiseley, saying, "Loren Eiseley's wilderness differs somewhat from others' in [this anthology], but it is no less the terrain of what is wild and what is free."  Somehow my mind paused, and I began to ask questions about what it means to be free, and what might lie behind the appeal of a freedom that wilderness seems to offer.

I say "seems to offer" because wilderness and wildness can be idealized.  A predator in the wild might appear "free" to us, but how "free" is the prey that is being chased?

Alexis de Tocqueville
(1850)

Today in the U.S., we often associate getting out into the open spaces of wilderness with freedom, but that has not always been the case.  When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, eager to see the American wilderness, visited this nation in 1831, he concluded:  "In Europe people talk a great deal of the wilds of America, but the American themselves never think about them; they are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature...."  The reason for such an American attitude at that time was primarily practical:  The hardship of merely surviving apart from the support-system of civilization made living "in the wild" anything but a pleasant getaway.  It would require the construction of mapped roads connecting towns, along with a change in attitudes, before Americans could resonate with Lord Byron's idea of "pleasure in the pathless woods."

We humans, like all living beings, depend upon other entities.  Despite that dependence, every living being -- if its life is able to reach a fullness -- must still obtain a type of freedom from something in its past.  A chick needs to hatch and leave its shell behind.  So also must adolescent humans find some separation from their parents.

That ambiguity regarding freedom can lead to human hypocrisy.  De Tocqueville made a wry observation about American society.  He said that when Americans are criticized for their behavior, they protest, "I have a right to do so" -- whereas when they see someone else doing something they do not like, they exclaim, "There ought to be a law!"

Paradoxically, we can find a kind of release, a kind of freedom, when we yield to some forms of dependence.  The bird finding the breakfast upon which its life depends is simultaneously gaining a temporary freedom from hunger.  And vice versa:  The being that is finding a new form of freedom is at the same time developing new relationships with new forms of dependence.  That young adult moving out of its parents' home now depends upon friends or a job to sustain the newfound freedom.

Self-actualizing is an ever-ongoing combination of freedom and ties, ties and freedom, all in motion.  We might employ that word "wild" in a slang sense by remarking upon what a "wild and crazy" kind of life it is to exist on this planet!

~~~

What do you think the purpose of freedom should be?  Can you give an example?

(The Ronald quote is from Words for the Wild, ed. Ann Ronald.  © 1987.  p. 237.)

(The Tocqueville quote is from his Democracy in America, as quoted in
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash, © 1982.  p. 23.)

(The quote by Lord Byron is from his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto IV, st. 178. [1817].)

The “House” that Nature Built

When I was in high-school, one area of curriculum being offered was called "home economics." Although the classes included household budget, they were primarily such things as cooking and sewing.  (Mostly girls attended.)  That recollection of the label "home economics" came back to me recently as I read about some of the history behind modern ecology -- history dating back 150 to 350 years.

illustration from
one of Haeckel's book

The key to understanding the matter is a single Greek word oikos, which means "house."  Although the fundamental ideas behind ecology developed over centuries as scientific knowledge grew, the term "ecology" was coined in 1866 by the prominent German biologist Ernst Haeckel.  To put what he did in English, a prefix derived from oikos was attached to the suffix "-logy" which means scientific study (as in bio-logy).  Thus, eco-logy looked at all of Nature as being a large "house" full of interrelationships that science was in the process of discovering.

That "-logy" suffix was a significant choice because it was a shift from a term scientists had been using in the preceding two centuries.  (Here's where those high-school classes about a woman's taking care of a home comes in.)  Before Haeckel, it was common for Europeans studying Nature to speak of the "economy" of the natural world.  We can see in "economy" the same "eco-" prefix as in "ecology." But "economy" has a different suffix, from nomos.  It is also from Greek, but means "management."  Thus, "eco-nomy" refers to the management of some type of "house" (à la "home economics" classes).

In the case of the "economy" of Nature, however, the "house" is not a building constituted by humans.  Nor are the humans the main managers.  In the worldview of scientists in the 1600's and 1700's, Nature by itself was seen as having an "economy," that is, a set of efficient, purposeful interrelationships.  This is why, for example, the 18th-century biologist Linnaeus was able to write:

"By the Oeconomy [i.e., Economy] of Nature,

 we understand the all-wise disposition of the Creator

 in relation to natural things,

 by which they are fitted to produce general ends [i.e., purposes]

 and reciprocal uses."

Over two-and-a-half centuries after Linnaeus -- who pioneered modern biological classification -- our current scientific knowledge and understanding of Nature's diversity and complexity has exploded.  Our increasing awareness of the wildness of Nature -- its resistance to being entirely domesticated or even subdued by our attempts at "management" -- has even raised questions about whether any "house" metaphor is accurate.

There is one thing our environmental problems have shown us, however:  As the 20th-century eco-theologian Sallie McFague puts it, in order for humankind to live sustainably in Nature, we need to learn this planet's "house rules."

~~~

What is the world of Nature (the non-human world) like to you?

(The Linnaeus quote is from his "The Oeconomy of Nature," 1749,

as quoted in Nature's Economy by Donald Worseter, © 1994, p. 37.)

(The illustration from Haeckel's book is in the Public Domain because its copyright has expired.)

Blaming the “Brutes”

Social power has always been problematic.  It can be used for good or used for ill.  (That story is as old as Adam and Eve.)  In the West today, many people have become increasingly aware of how social hierarchies have been one avenue through which social power has been misused -- such as slaveholder over slave, and men over women.  There have also been hierarchies that have fostered condescension toward animals (or even worse, their abuse).

Frequently in the U.S. and England, such condescension came in the form of applying the word "brutes" to other mammals, whether wild or domesticated.  And it is no coincidence that definitions of the word "brute" include not only "an animal; a beast," but also "a brutal, crude, or insensitive person." As one of countless examples, the 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley made the following parallel:  "To degrade Humane Kind [humankind] to a level with Brute Beasts."  Even the 19th-century nature-writer Henry David Thoreau, who we today think of as being enlightened for his time wrote:  "None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter.”

This long-standing tendency to condescend to both animals and people lower on the hierarchy continued into the twentieth century, even if it sometimes became less obvious.  I chanced upon an example when I was reading, of all things, Michael Downing's history of the U.S.'s struggles over daylight saving time.  In the early 20th century, after legislation required an annual time-shift, The Nation magazine reported that "the ceremony of putting forward the clack has passed... without friction save for a growl from the farmer who anticipates trouble with his hired hand and his cow."  What caught my attention about that depiction was that the word "growl" -- a word usually used for the sound some non-human animals make --  was applied to a human being.  And, the two kinds of beings lowest in the hierarchy (the "cow" and the "hired hand") are blamed.

But farmers were the main opponents for a reason:  Even if they got up an hour earlier, that did not mean the cow's milk-giving had made any adjustment in its natural rhythms.  Moreover, what that statement by The Nation did not explain was that it was not just those underlings who objected to the time change.  But the underlings get blamed.

Today, our still expanding knowledge from the science of ecology has made it harder to think of our relationships with animals as their being on rungs below us on a vertical ladder. Instead, we -- humans and non-humans -- are related through multiple strands of a web.  Not just in the milk we drink and the food we eat, but also in cycles of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus. Moreover, we humans are more dependent upon other species of life than most of them are dependent upon us.  We could not live without many of them, whereas most other species could do quite well without us.

As our ecological awareness expands, maybe we can also come to be more aware of our dependence upon people who are lower than us on the social scale.  And more sensitive to their needs as well.

~~~

Which animals or people "beneath you," which you depend upon, come to your mind?

(The Berkeley quote is from Alciphron [1732], I. i. xiii. 48.)

(The Thoreau quote is from Walden [1854], Chap. 1:  "Economy.")

(The  quote from The Nation, April, 1919, is in Spring Forward, by Michael Downing.  © 2005 . p. 22.)

The Restraint of Insects

Most people in the U.S., I would guess, have heard of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of "Peanuts."  A fair number of people have heard of Pogo's creator Walt Kelly.  Few people, however, know the name Don Marquis, who, in the first part of the 20th century, created the serialized humor of "Archy and Mehitabel."  In its time, that series provided witty comment on the human condition, usually through the eyes of an otherwise harmless cockroach named Archy.  I was struck by the perceptiveness of one of Archy's observations I recently came across in an anthology:

"if all the bugs

in all the worlds...

should sharpen up

their little stings

and turn their feelings loose

they soon would show

all human beans...

their relative significance

among the spinning stars."

green damselfly

Indeed, if human beings ("beans," as Archy pronounces it) could actually experience firsthand the bottled-up energy of every single insect in the world, we would quickly know we are outnumbered.  The best calculations are that insects outnumber the human population a million to one, and in total body mass outweigh the human population twelve times over. Moreover, what an enduring as well as versatile form evolution found when it developed the insect structure. We human beings walking upright are only one species; but the basic insect structure (3-sectioned body & 6 legs) comes in a fantastic array of a million species.  Some are as delicate as a damselfly.  Others, such as Goliath beetles, look like army tanks in comparison. Still others, such as walking sticks, are camouflaged as twigs.

ladybug

Given the incomprehensible number of insects worldwide, and the versatility of the class Insecta to evolve in almost any condition, the "if" that introduces Archy's poem is significant: Archy's scenario is imaginary. Insects are, for the greater part, much more concerned with leading their own lives than they are with harassing humans. Moreover, a mindless desire on our part to indiscriminately rid our planet of insects would mean the loss of bees and other insects that pollinate fruit and nut trees, and help pollinate other crops. Their roles as pollinators only hint at the vital links insects serve overall, being food for birds, some fishes, and many mammals.  Those animals in turn nurture the many cycles of air and soil. Not to mention the delight many children can get as they discover the animated wonders of usually harmless insects.

Archy, in his own restraint, merely implied another point.  Namely that, on the whole, the class Insecta has demonstrated more restraint in its behavior than has Homo sapiens.  Although we do need to find better ways to regulate the dangerous effects of certain insects, maybe we can add to our more restrained behavior a greater appreciation of the benefits of insects.

~~~

Have you every imagined what it would be like to be a certain insect?  Which one?

(The poem of Archy is from

  The Lives and Times of Arch & Mehitabel by Don Marquis, © 1935.)
(The photo of the damselfly by JDP90 [Joydeep] used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

A Land that Waits for Us to Change

ancient Egyptian farming (ca 1300 B.C.E.)

I remember in middle school being taught the word "delta".  We were in a history class, learning how the ancient Egyptian civilization developed around the delta of the Nile River where it made its outlet into the Mediterranean.  It was explained to us how that area was a fertile area because it was there that the river's branching rivulets created a triangular plain of rich soil built up of sediments from the shifting water.

The importance of that phenomenon was imprinted upon our minds by it being pointed out that in Greek the letter "delta" was a small triangle.  Moreover, the mathematical symbol delta (a small triangle) stood for change, because it was those regular changes of the river delta -- being covered with water and then draining -- that made the soil fertile.  The strength of that Egyptian civilization was thus based on the strength of the natural delta, which supported many forms of life, providing humans both fishing and farming.

William Faulkner

From thoughts of that civilization 5,000 years ago, my thoughts now turn to a story by the 20th-century U.S. writer William Faulkner.  It is a shift in time and place, but there is a common denominator -- the delta.  In Faulkner's story "Delta Autumn,"  a small group of men are making a journey to a wilderness area for their annual hunting.  To get there, however, they have to head towards where the last hill ends and an "alluvial flatness" begins -- a delta!  In his characteristic writing style, Faulkner describes the power that rich land has held for generations of humans in this way:  " [T]he rich black land, imponderable and vast, fecund up to the very doorsteps of the Negroes who worked it and of the white men who owned it; which exhausted the hunting life of a dog in one year, the working life of a mule in five and of a man in twenty."

Although that theme of the vast, sustaining power of the delta is thus described early in Faulkner's short story, the theme of change is also more subtly introduced.  From the conversation of the men in the car on their drive to the delta, the reader is able to pick up that they are living in a larger world that has been greatly changed by forces far beyond the county in Mississippi where most of Faulkner's fiction is set.  The men in the story are living on the brink of the U.S.'s entering World War II, and so some of their banter is about whether U.S. people are more powerful than Hitler.  Their exchanges reveal a degree of uncertainty about what the future might bring.

That theme of change in human society is threaded through with the theme of Nature being guaranteed to change in a rhythmic way.  That is because the story takes place in autumn, a time of change, despite the predictability of fall hunting trips.  Two words, both symbolizing change, are thus paired in the story's title:  "Delta Autumn."

As I re-read the story, in my mind's eye I see a vast, darkish delta surrounding the men.  It would be darkish with the men's melancholy about the unrecoverable past and the shrinking wilderness. It would also be darkish with their uncertainty about the future.  However, as the passage quoted above indicates, it would be Nature, the land, represented by the delta, that could still sustain life, if it was allowed to do so.

~~~

Most of us live in cities, but do you recall a piece of land that provided sustenance?

(The quote is from William Faulkner's "Delta Autumn,"

 which can be found in The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcolm Cowley, © 1974.)

(The photograph of Faulkner is by Nobel Foundation, and is used by its being in the public domain.)

Seeing More than Seashells on the Seashore

The ones I see in the natural world are rarely as beautiful as the ones I see in photographs in books.  Seashells, that is.  Almost invariably, the shells shown in books' photographs are shiny, smooth, whole, and brightly colored; whereas the shells I find on beaches are often worn, dulled, or even chipped.  Of course, that can be part of the fun in collecting shells -- the challenge of finding one that is nearly perfect.

The story of our human fascination with shells, however, has involved more than merely collecting shells. Seashells have become a part of human culture in both tangible and intangible ways. In some tropical locations, because numerous, small, almost identical shells can be found, they have been turned into such things as currency or necklace beads.  Even when fewer shells or only less spectacular ones can be found, they can still be turned into a child's art project.

Our intangible relationships with shells are less obvious, but more intriguing -- in particular, the way that shells have become vehicles for reflecting about who we are in the world.  The modern classic in this regard was Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 1955 book Gift from the Sea.  In that little, beautifully written book, Anne Lindbergh primarily used the outward shapes of different shells as metaphors for aspects of her own life.  Different shell-shapes become springboards as she reflected upon the question, "What is the shape of my life?"  Her book, reprinted in numerous editions, has been an inspiration to many, especially those who have felt the burdens and restrictions of society's not allowing equal roles for women.

However, as I look at and think about seashells, I would like to think of them as more than a physical shape that can be an analogy for some contour of my life.  I want to keep in mind that those shells have been part of the body of living creatures -- creatures who have had interests and endeavors of their own, sometimes endeavors quite different than mine.  Although I am interested in relationships between those shells on the beach and my own life, it is not so much a metaphorical relationship as it is the actual relationship between our human lives here on land and the lives of creatures in the ocean.  (In this way, I am influenced by a later generation of nature writers who have been affected by the modern environmental movement and by the science of ecology.)  A snail-like spiraling shell might be a special object of beauty to me, but to the animal who lived in it, that spiral was just a side product of the way it added to its shell as its body grew.

Therefore, as I study those shells and look at pictures of them in books, I also look at the diagrams of the strange bodies that once lived within those shells.  I do not see anything we might think of as a "normal" animal shape in the strange body, but I can recognize the diagram's words labeling parts such as "Mouth" and "Intestine." And, in some cases, even "eye."  As I read those labels, I am forced into remembering that in this shell was once a living, breathing being!  Maybe my delight in thinking about all those other beings can be for me a different kind of gift from the sea.

~~~

Have you ever picked up or gathered shells on a beach?  What made it enjoyable?

(The brief line by Lindbergh is from Chap. 2 of

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, © 1955.

  Twenty years after its 1955 publication, Lindbergh wrote an afterword,
 looking back at the book, which can be found in many editions.)

Of Warps and Wefts and Life

"Everything's connected" -- it has now become a maxim, almost a cliché.  Connected, yes, but how?  That's the harder question.  (Not to mention the challenge of deciding and learning how to behave as if everything is connected.)  One of the most common of metaphors is the "web of life," but I have my reservations about it, as I shall explain.

Although many people today have now heard of the phrase the "web of life," few people know that it was coined way back in 1914 by a Scottish biologist, J. Arthur Thompson.  Like many other phrases of our contemporary environmental vocabulary, it took some time before it worked its way into the general vocabulary.  The  choice of that word "web" has proved quite useful in conveying an image of the multiple interconnections of Nature, rather than a simple chain of cause and effect.  For example, in some biology textbooks, the phrase "food webs" has become preferred over the more familiar "food chains," as a way of conveying that digestible substances do not follow a simple linear path, but instead create multiple interconnections among plants and animals.

I have just one reservation about that standard word "web," however:  It has an association with spiders!  And everybody knows how repellent spiders can be to many people, not just to Little Miss Muffet (even though only a few kinds of spiders are potentially dangerous). Because ecologists and environmentalists would like to cultivate in more people a love of Nature, I wonder if risking mental associations with spider bites and sticky cobwebs and haunted houses is the best idea.

male lesser masked weaver

More appealing than "web" I think, is another metaphor -- the "fabric of life."  That metaphor can convey the image of a protective cloth, even a beautifully woven one. Recently, I was reminded of the weaving metaphor for interconnectedness when I saw pictures of the weaverbirds of Africa.  Those skillful birds actually weave thin strips torn from grass to create a nest that protects their young against sun and snakes.  One species of weaverbirds even constructs a nest that is elegantly spherical.  Certainly an association with cute birds is more appealing than an association with spiders!

The metaphor of "fabric" has other advantages.   It can also convey the image of a cloth being torn, the connecting threads being broken by human carelessness, with the fabric unraveling as a result.  That was the way Rachel Carson employed the metaphor when, in Silent Spring, she warned about the indiscriminate overuse of pesticides.  She wrote:  "As crude a weapon as the cave man's club... has been hurled against the fabric of life."

Moreover, the "fabric" metaphor can be adapted to refer to the work of finding a new pattern for human living that will strengthen the living systems of the Earth.  That was the very imagery that was employed by a group of feminist ecological writers.  The subtitle of their book was The Emergence of Ecofeminism.  And the book's title? Reweaving the World.

~~~

Do the metaphors of fabric and of weaving convey anything to you?

(The quotation by Carson is from

 Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, © 1962.)
(Both photographs licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses. 
The bird photograph by Dick Daniels, http://carolinabirds.org
The fabric by Cochas, Peru, 2008.)