Neither Alone Nor Unacknowledged
9/9/21
Hello everyone: For this week’s curated Anthropocene news, I want to enthusiastically point you to two brilliant, wonderful essays:
1) “What Slime Knows” in Orion by Lacy M. Johnson, about slime molds and our longstanding myths about hierarchy in taxonomy. Here’s a sample:
“Here in this little patch of mulch in my yard is a creature that begins life as a microscopic amoeba and ends it as a vibrant splotch that produces spores, and for all the time in between, it is a single cell that can grow as large as a bath mat, has no brain, no sense of sight or smell, but can solve mazes, learn patterns, keep time, and pass down the wisdom of generations.”
And check out more of Alison Pollack’s beautiful slime mold photos here.
2) “Returning the Gift” in Humans and Nature by Robin Wall Kimmerer, about realigning ourselves with life rather than against it. For example:
“Paying attention to other beings—recognizing their incredible gifts of photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, mi…
