Author. Thinker. Other things.
Valentine’s Day is almost upon us. But we’ve had warning - the decorations started going up in stores the day after Christmas. As a holiday, though, it almost keeps pace with Christmas. The first incarnation of the celebration may go back to Ancient Roman times, with the fertility festival of Lupercalia. St. Valentine himself could... Continue Reading →
Bestselling author, Richard Louv, author of Our Wild Calling Photo: Richard Louv 2016 I recently had the chance fulfill a long-time ambition, to have a chat with the Richard Louv best-selling author of many books, including “Last Child in the Woods” and “The Nature Principle.” Richard is a leader in thinking about nature deficit and... Continue Reading →
The other day, while looking for something to watch on YouTube, I was offered up in the side-bar a series of videos of a chicken playing the piano. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and was treated to two minutes and one second of a chicken at an electric piano playing "O mio babbino caro"... Continue Reading →
I've written recently about our pressing need to think globally about wet markets and the bushmeat trade. Aside from their devastating impact on wildlife, these practices are superhighways for diseases to enter the human population, with catastrophic effects to health and the global economy. While we're currently experiencing this with Covid-19, it's also been the... Continue Reading →
There was a turkey in our backyard this morning. It was scratching around the the wood pile looking for whatever small animals might be living there. Despite diving for my phone, I missed getting a photo of it, so here's a picture from somebody else. Living in an urban area as we do, it's pretty... Continue Reading →
I've always loved this painting. Vertumnus looks serenely at the viewer, a slight smile making you think he knows something you'd like to. It's a clever work of Mannerism, seamlessly weaving a complex array of perfectly rendered fruits and other plants into the portrait of a human face full of character. The portrait is of... Continue Reading →
A friend of mine just received an email from Amazon recommending that, based on her recent activity, she might like to purchase The Future of Natural History Museums. She was so impressed, she mailed it to me. I'm so impressed that I'm including it for you. So, the book. It was a collaboration between the... Continue Reading →
I'm just about to give a public lecture. It will be at Whanganui Regional Museum in a couple of days' time. The talk is, with some modification, one that I delivered in Japan last month, as a guest of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba. The topic of the gathering was the... Continue Reading →
ERIC DORFMAN 