New, reheard or remembered in 2021

 

Maypop (passionflower) juice

Maypop is a North American passionflower that is cold-tolerant. It makes an edible fruit that has long been eaten by native Americans and rural populations in the southerneastern US. In Louisiana it is sometimes referred to as pomegranate vine. It has a vine growth form that is known for being weedy, and some consider Passiflora incarnata invasive. I've had to pull runners up all summer to keep it from growing over my other plants. I'll know next year if I have a source of fruit juice and leaf cover to cool my porch, or if I have a weedy monster I can't control.  It does die back completely in the fall though. It does not leave behind a woody vine that persists through the winter. The fruits just needs to be scooped out, squeezed or pressed against the sides of water-filled pitcher to extract the juice, then chill. 

Harvesting my molokhia

Also known as Lebanese spinach, Egyptian spinach, Palestinian spinach, If I get a lot of seed pods I may make refrigerator pickles out of them. Below is a closeup of some of the leaves. And at the bottom are the plants in my garden. They are well over six feet tall. I had minor beetle damage on the top leaves mid summer, but they grew well and needed very little care or watering. I'll probably grow it again as I have been using the leaves all summer on pizza, sandwiches, and wraps. Photos of the cooked version coming soon.

White asparagus long beans

 I grew another crop of asparagus beans this summer.  Asparagus beans originated in Asia and are increasingly grown in the US. They looks like snap beans but are actually more related to southern cowpeas. They are also pest resistant and in my garden much easier to grow than some of the more common Kentucky bean varieties. The photo at the bottom is my storage freezer. It is filled with tomatoes and lots of bags of asparagus beans - I can make Lebanese green beans for dinner all winter.

On pragmatism and problem solving

Savransky, M. (2021). Around the day in eighty worlds: Politics of the pluriverse. Duke University Press

Savransky, M. (2021). The pluralistic problematic: William James and the pragmatics of the pluriverse. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(2), 141-159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419848030

 

Savransky, M. (2020). Problems All the Way Down. Theory, Culture & Society.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420966389

Excerpt is from Savransky (2020)

Gooseberries

 It has been good weather for gooseberries. I did a better job pruning them this spring too. I'm picking them as soon as they show a little blush of red. The birds have so far left them alone, but the chipmunks are getting their fair share.

Cherries, Egyptian spinach, and sumac

 This year I had my first cherry harvest. These are North Star cherries, a sour cherry. Sweet cherries do not do well here in Kentucky. My small tree, more a bush right now, produced enough cherries for a cobbler or pie. However, I ate them in smoothies and in oatmeal. Next year, a cobbler. You can pit them quickly with a metal straw, it was not much work at all. I planted the cherry trees a couple of years ago. This spring I planted elderberry, aronia berry, American hazelnut, a currant shrub, and a Chicago fig. Chicago figs are a cold-hardy variety unlike the figs I used to pick in Athens, GA and Charleston, SC.  I am also trying two new vegetables this growing season. I have a new variety of asparagus bean in the ground, and I also have Egyptian spinach. Egyptian spinach seedlings are shown in the lowermost photo. There are several varieties of this spinach and some debate as to its origins as a food. From what I have learned I am growing a Lebanese variety, which is more in line with the common name used to advertise this plant at Truelove Seeds. They call it Palestinian spinach, but it can go by many names depending upon the region. It is prepared as a very green stew or soup to accompany rice or meat. Just in front of all the spinach seedlings is a staghorn sumac. I'm not sure this little volunteer is going to make it, but I have a couple of now large plants (my height) that should flower and fruit this year. I'll use the berries to make my own sumac spice and sumac-ade to drink.

New journal

I will be a co-editor of this new journal from the Environment and Planning series as Sage Publishers. The driving force behind this new offering is Noel Castree. 

Environment and Sustainability Studies II: Natural Sciences and Policy - ENS 202

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course, we examine how humans perceive, interpret, and manage socioecological systems with the intent of sustainability. To do this we first consider the different ways in which science can be practiced and how this shapes our understanding of causality as it relates to staking broad environmental policy positions. We then examine the history of scientific ideas about ecological organization in order to better understand how they have informed policy over time. What does it mean today when we say an ecological system is ‘resilient’, ‘complex’ or that an environmental problem is ‘wicked’?  How does the way in which biodiversity is conceptualized matter for the policies that aim to protect and conserve it? A deeper understanding of policies that invoke sustainability is not just about having scientific knowledge about the environment and the organisms in it. Nor is it just a matter of having a specific kind of beliefs and politics.  It is also about learning how humans think, make choices, and respond to problems that span individual and societal impacts. Through ideas in anthropology, economics, psychology, geography, ecology and biology, students in this course will acquire a more sophisticated understanding of how humans conceptualize, comprehend, and manage their impacts through environmental policies.

COURSE TOPICS

1. The world viewed through sense, mind and context: where science and policy begin

How we sense and measure the world shapes science and how we attribute causality. Yet science itself is not one but many different kinds of knowledge practices tht all occur within a social context. In this unit, we explore the underpinnings of how science is done in order to understand the ways in which it relates to environmental and sustainability policies.

Introduction
Philosophy and science
Scale
Sampling


2. Order, disorder, and complexity: science and policy as co-evolutionary dynamic

In this unit, we explore the nature of ecological change, and how our shifting understanding of it is central to making environmental policy and comprehending goals like sustainability.  Change can be gradual and reversible as well as sudden and irreversible. Change is inherent to the world, thus policies that aim for sustainability must make educated guesses as to the trajectories of change that are probable, possible, and unforeseen.

Ecological order and disorder
Complex systems
Resilience theory
Adaptive management


3. Understanding prediction and human behavior for environmental policy

In this unit, we examine how we make assumptions about the future, an inherent facet of policy. To do this often requires working with incomplete information. Thus we are required to anticipate the future through models and modeling.  Yet another aspect of policy must also be considered, that of human decision making and the ways in which we think and reason through situations that involve tradeoffs between the individual and society.

Game theory
Models and modeling
Climate change science and policy


4. Rethinking biodiversity and policy

Biodiversity policy is made upon a shifting understanding of what biodiversity is and how it works. In this unit we cultivate an understanding of the uncertainties and subjectivities of biodiversity, and how they have become enmeshed in current policies and practices.

Constraints on biodiversity conservation
Reframing the idea of biodiversity
Revisiting biodiversity narratives about megafauna conservation
Island and mosaic approaches to biodiversity policy



5. A good versus a bad Anthropocene

In this unit we explore the tension between environmentalist versus ecomodernist policies that aim to address a growing number of wicked problems. Technological fixes, data-driven problem solving, market processes, and financial instruments are increasingly invoked in policy debates as to whether humans can have a good versus a bad Anthropocene.

Environmentalism versus ecomodernism
Algorithmic Earth
Financializing nature
Geoengineering