Where the wild things are is a shifting concept influenced by culture, upbringing, environs, what we watch on our screens, and, for me, the tussle between my education as a wildlife biologist and my experiences in the field. Taking to heart a core tenet of conservation science—that wild animals, certainly large carnivores, belong in the wilderness—I began my career in the 1990s by visiting nature reserves in India to study Asiatic lions and clouded leopards. When in the new millennium I stumbled on leopards living in and around villages, I was shocked. “They shouldn't be here!” my training shouted. But there they were, leaping over the metaphysical walls scholars had constructed between nature and humankind as nonchalantly as they strolled past the physical boundaries of protected areas.
Take the first leopard I collared with a GPS tag: a large male that had fallen into a well near Junnar, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, in the summer of 2009. He took refuge on a ledge just above the water, and forest department personnel rescued him by lowering a ladder with a trap cage at the top into the well. It had been a hot day, and the leopard was clearly old and very tired, but even after climbing up into the cage, he remained unruffled. My team—veterinarian Karabi Deka, a local farmer named Ashok Ghule who served as a translator and guide, me (a doctoral student at the time) and some others—made sure he was secure, and Deka shot a tranquilizer dart into him through the cage bars. He didn't even growl. His calm, gentle and elderly demeanor induced us to call him Ajoba, which means “grandfather” in Marathi, the area's local language.
As present debates about what constitutes history continue to evoke images of a monolithic, unchanging understanding of the past, constructed out of blocks of neutral facts excavated from the archives, it is time, perhaps, that we pay new attention to fragments and lost voices, historical cul-de-sacs and missed turns, to the history that was not recorded, and the history that did not happen.
Few ideas are as unsupported, ridiculous and even downright harmful as that of the ‘human soul’. And yet, few ideas are as widespread and as deeply held. What gives? Why has such a bad idea had such a tenacious hold on so many people? Although there is a large literature on the costs and benefits – psychological and economic – of traditional religion, there is a dearth of comparable research on religion’s near-universal handmaiden, the soul. As with Justice Potter Stewart’s non-definition of pornography – ‘I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it’ – the soul is slippery and, even though it cannot be seen (or smelled, touched, heard or tasted), soul-certain people seem to agree that they know it when they imagine it. And they imagine it in everyone.
I’ve had a manuscript locked in a drawer for three and a half years now. It’s a coming-of-age novel about a boy who believes a supernatural force has seized the minds of the adults in his life. He and his best friend confront and defeat the supernatural force, but victory comes at the cost of their innocence—the classic trade-off. I don’t know if it’s my best work, but it’s my favorite. Perhaps inevitably, I’m terrified of ever trying to sell it to someone.
It looked as if a war was coming. It was. One Sunday last month, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. Storefront windows had been fortified with plywood and tarps. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared, walls of them stacked eight feet high and even farther across. The crates looked like barricades but were actually arms depots. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.
The climax of the book, what Lucca discovers, is not to be shared in this review. But it is the recognizable nightmare of anyone who has loved an art monster. More terrifying and tantalizing is the message such parallel worlds send to art monsters themselves. Lacey asks, what happens when we don’t choose love?
Beware, argue the authors of a new book. Besuited jetsetters, armed with prestigious degrees and powerpoint slides, have infiltrated governments and corporations around the world. They claim to offer valuable expertise and fresh ideas. But don't be fooled! The consulting industry, the authors argue, is selling snake oil that is poisoning governments and distorting economies.
Morning’s sun holds me:
summer farewell,
fall welcome,