bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mt. Graham: The Biopolitics of Change
Authors: deBuys William
Published: November 2020

The site manager for the Mt. Graham International Observatory (MGIO) met us at the locked gate to the Telescope Road. He was not there to greet us. John Ratje had driven out from Tucson, starting before dawn and traveling not less than two and a half hours, to demand that we surrender to him a key that would have opened the gate. A member of his staff had loaned it to us the afternoon before, but Ratje swept aside that troublesome fact. Ratje also demanded the two-way radio we’d been issued to assure safety on the narrow road to the mountaintop. “That’s University of Arizona property,” he said. “It should not have been given to you.” Our shock at his demands no doubt showed in our faces. Ratje wanted to forestall argument, so he added ominously, “University police are on their way.” I’d been about to unlock the gate when he stepped from the trees. His truck was parked nearby, and he’d no doubt been waiting quite a while. He was a big man, but uncomfortable. His voice had a quaver of anxiety. At first I thought he merely wanted to inspect our one-day permit for entering the Red Squirrel Refugium, the restricted area that surrounds the observatory, at the top of the mountain. I’d obtained the permit from the Forest Service the previous day in Safford; I pulled it now from my shirt pocket, unfolded it, and extended it to him, but he ignored it. We did not have permission to go in, he repeated: “This area is ours.” I stammered a question or two, but the answer did not vary: our entry was barred, and police would soon arrive to ensure our compliance. Then my companion, Peter Warshall, a conservation biologist whose name was recorded on the permit along with mine, asked, “Is this about me? Am I the reason you won’t let us in?” “Your name was part of the discussion,” Ratje said. A discussion? I had thought our visit was routine.
The Fall of the Faculty
Authors: Ginsberg Benjamin
Published: November 2020

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty. As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.
Future Considerations
Authors: Dorfman Jay
Published: November 2020

The dominant issues that the TBMI community will face for the next 30 years and beyond are just starting to appear through the fog. In this final chapter, I will introduce some of the trends that have recently emerged that may impact the development of TBMI pedagogy, and speculate on directions they might take. These trends include, but are certainly not limited to, (1) the emergence of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones and their potential for music making; (2) the growing popularity of alternative and electronic ensembles; (3) concerns about connections between traditional forms of music making—specifically, the critical role that singing plays in learning to be musical—and music technology; (4) the possibilities of technology-enhanced distance learning in music; and (5) the critical examination we must do regarding social and inclusion issues, and their relationships to music technology. There is little doubt that mobile devices, and particularly the iPad, will revolutionize our work in TBMI. Interestingly, as I scoured the landscape for teachers in the K–12 environment who are using iPads in their classrooms as replacements for notebook or desktop computers, few examples emerged. This provides evidence that we are at a point in technological development where we are still very much a computer lab-based culture, but we see the promise of mobile devices. Mrs. J teaches at a small independent school. Although not an official designation, the school’s teachers consider it to be project-based, and much of what Mrs. J does in her music classes is designed around projects. Her fourth grade students were composing short melodies using their recorders and then using GarageBand on iPads to create accompaniments to their melodies. My questions for Mrs. J focused on the pedagogical aspects of using iPads in her classes. First we talked about her general experiences using iPads, especially given that her students share the devices in groups of three or four. The sharing aspect seemed like it might be problematic because the iPad is designed as a personal device, usually viewed and used by one person.
Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning: Two Heads Might Actually Be Better than One
Authors: Greher Gena R. , Heines Jesse M.
Published: November 2020

In this interconnected, socially networked, 24/7, multidimensional, media-centric culture, your students are doing just fine creating, performing, and making things without your help. Thanks to the proliferation of user-friendly, intuitive software applications to create, capture, and perform music, as well as websites that allow easy showing and sharing of these creations, your students can lead very productive, creative, and expressive lives without the baggage of learning traditional music notation and computer code. This realization sends shudders through some of our fellow professors, but nonetheless it is a reality of our times. You can choose to fight these trends and hold fast to the traditions of an educational system designed for another era and different priorities, or you can meet your students where they are. Much of education has been about the transmission of subject-specific content with a focus on the individual. This fosters competition for the teacher’s attention and top grades. Hierarchical classrooms perpetuate the notion of teachers as authority figures and decision makers while supplicant students wait for the teacher’s knowledge to be bestowed upon them. Socialization is rarely encouraged inside the classroom. On the other hand, the modern workplace is flattening its hierarchical structure and becoming ever more dependent upon critical thinking skills, collaboration, teamwork, and shared decision making. In fact, many corporate offices are being designed physically to foster collaboration through shared offices and informal small lounges where workers can gather to brainstorm. Learning to work with others is a lifelong endeavor. These skill sets don’t develop in a vacuum. They need to be nurtured through modeling and experience. As suggested by John-Steiner, students need to be socialized into the culture of collaborative work and the kinds of creative and critical thinking the new workplace requires. As you will discover, collaborative work yields processes and results that are far richer than any that a single person’s expertise can produce.
R Tutorial
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

This chapter is a tutorial on using R. To get the most out of it, you should open an R session and type the commands into the console as you read the text. You should be able to use copy-and-paste if you have access to an electronic version of the book. All code is available on the book’s Web site. Science requires transparency and reproducibility. The R language for statistical modeling makes this easy. Developing, maintaining, and documenting your R code is simple. R contains numerous functions for organizing, graphing, and modeling your data. Directions for obtaining R, accompanying packages, and other sources of documentation are available at http://www.r-project.org/. Anyone serious about applying statistics to climate data should learn R. The book is self-contained. It presents R code and data (or links to data) that can be copied to reproduce the graphs and tables. This reproducibility provides you with an enhanced learning opportunity. Here we present a tutorial to help you get started. This can be skipped if you already know how to work with R. R is the ‘lingua franca’ of data analysis and statistical computing. It helps you perform a variety of computing tasks by giving you access to commands. This is similar to other programming languages such as Python and C++. R is particularly useful to researchers because it contains a number of built-in functions for organizing data, performing calculations, and creating graphics. R is an open-source statistical environment modeled after S. The S language was developed in the late 1980s at AT&T labs. The R project was started by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka of the Statistics Department of the University of Auckland in 1995. It now has a large audience. It is currently maintained by the R core-development team, an international group of volunteer developers. To get to the R project Web site, open a browser and, in the search window, type the keywords “R project” or directly link to the Web page using http://www.r-project.org/. Directions for obtaining the software, accompanying packages, and other sources of documentation are provided at the site.
Bayesian Statistics
Authors: Elsner James B. , Jagger Thomas H.
Published: November 2020

Classical statistics involves ways to test hypotheses and estimate confidence intervals. Bayesian statistics involves methods to calculate probabilities associated with your hypotheses. The result is a posterior distribution that combines information from your data with prior beliefs. The term “Bayesian” comes from Bayes’s theorem—a single formula for obtaining the posterior distribution. It is the cornerstone of modern statistical methods. In this chapter we introduce Bayesian statistics. We begin by considering the problem of learning about the population proportion (percentage) of all hurricanes that make landfall. We then consider the problem of estimating how many days it takes your manuscript to get accepted for publication. Again, we encourage you to follow along by typing the code into your R console. Models that have skill at forecasting hurricane counts are more relevant to society if they include an estimate of the proportion that make landfall. Before examining the data, you hold a belief about the value of this proportion. You model your belief in terms of a prior distribution. Then after examining some data, you update your belief about the proportion by computing the posterior distribution (Albert, 2009). This setting allows you to predict the likely outcomes of a new sample taken from the population, for example, the proportion of landfalls for next year. The use of the pronoun “you” focuses attention on the Bayesian viewpoint that probabilities do not exist but are how much you personally believe that something is true. Said another way, probabilities are subjective and based on all the relevant information available to you. Here you think of a population consisting of past and future hurricanes in the North Atlantic. Then let π represent the proportion of this population that hit the United States at hurricane intensity. The value of π is unknown. You are interested in learning about what the value of π could be. Bayesian statistics requires that you represent your belief about the uncertainty in this percentage with a probability distribution. The distribution reflects your subjective prior opinion about plausible values of π. Before you examine a sample of hurricanes, you think about what the value of π might be.
Land for the Free
Authors: Ross Andrew
Published: November 2020

In November 2006, just as the real estate bubble was running out of hot air, Arizona voters approved a proposition with drastic consequences for land-use regulation. Proposition 207 was promoted as a property-rights initiative that barred municipalities from taking private property through eminent domain for some other private development. In this respect, it was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo ruling, which had partially legalized such powers. But a more far-reaching, and less publicized, provision of the Arizona proposition required local governments to compensate property owners if a government action, such as a zoning change or enactment of an environmental or other land-use law, led to a drop in the property’s value. Bankrolled by Howard Rich, a libertarian developer tycoon from New York, the initiative was pushed onto the ballot in several states, but Arizona voters were the only ones to bite. Passage of the proposition put a large question mark over all plans to alter land use in the state. Fear of lawsuits that could drain their coffers prompted city officials to think twice about making any changes to zoning ordinances, the bread and butter of municipal planning. More comprehensive eff orts at regulating fringe growth or re-urbanizing downtown areas were beset by uncertainty about the newly hostile legal landscape. Prop 207 was the latest, and most urban, challenge to the exercise of government power over land use in the West. The Sagebrush rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s, which pushed for more local control over public land holdings, was a rural assault on federal regulatory efforts such as the protection of environmentally sensitive land as wilderness. The ensuing rise of the anti-takings movement, launched by Richard Epstein’s 1985 book, Takings : Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain was also directed against government support for environmentally minded initiatives like smart growth. Fallout from these backlashes turned the West into a prime zone of conflict over land use.
Dirty, Sacred Rivers
Authors: Colopy Cheryl
Published: November 2020

I wanted to see the source of what we in the West call the Ganges. Here in South Asia people call it Mother Ganga, Gangaji, the Great Ganga. At the edge of the icy river that flows from the Gangotri glacier I scooped Gangajal—Ganges water—into plastic soft drink bottles. I planned to take some of this water to friends in Kathmandu, practicing Hindus for whom the drops of glacial melt would have spiritual meaning. Along with its tremendous religious and ritual value, the water of the Ganga has been shown to be both antimicrobial and richer in oxygen than that of other rivers. Revered beyond all others, this river is now abused in equal measure: harnessed for hydropower near its holy mountain source, polluted with every imaginable waste as it runs its course for more than 1,500 miles across the widest part of the Indian subcontinent. One of the Ganga’s main and equally sacred tributaries, the Yamuna, flows through Delhi. Delhi, a city of more than fifteen million, owes its existence to this river, which is now dead at its doorstep. Industrial effluents pour in upriver, then Delhi adds its sewage. During my first trip to Delhi in January 2007, I went down to the edge of the Yamuna. I wanted to see just how bad the river’s reputed pollution might be. First I saw the barren ground along the riverside, strewn with rubble from the construction of a nearby bridge. There was little to tell me that this area was also the site of regular religious practice where people come to do puja, take a little of the water to splash on their heads, throw some flowers into the river. Bunching up in the eddies under the bridge pylons were stray bits of colored plastic and plastic shopping bags bloated with garbage, floating like sagging baloons half filled with air. They mingled with broken yellow marigolds scattered in the water and bright red flowers set afloat in little cups by those who had come to worship by the river.
The Engineers
Authors: Colopy Cheryl
Published: November 2020

I made it out of Bihar with no trouble, much to my surprise and Eklavya’s. On the drive back north he was busy talking on his cell phone and I was busy talking to another man in the car about ecological toilets. I had considered trying to camouflage my pale foreignness and look a little more South Asian with some sunglasses and a scarf around my head, but before I could do so we sailed right past the guard post near the border. The guards did not signal the driver to stop. I was back in Nepal. I tried to insist that Eklavya and his colleagues go on back to Birpur and their work, since I could speak a little Nepali and manage to get the transportation I needed. But good hosts that they were, they stayed and drank tea in Bhantabari until they could see me off in a bus. The suffering I saw in Bihar would seem to dictate the answer: remove the embankments as soon as possible. Let them melt back into a swirl of earth and water during each year’s monsoon floods. There will be some floods, but far fewer disasters, and the subsiding waters will leave rich silt to replenish the land. That is Dinesh Mishra’s solution. He knows it’s not likely to happen in his lifetime. As long as the public can be made to believe that what happens in Bihar is a natural disaster, probably little will change. Backing out of this man-made disaster, even with the visionary leadership Dinesh Mishra hopes will come someday, will be monumentally difficult. Even if the government decided to breach the embankments and let the rivers breathe, what about the highways and the rail corridors? Everything would have to be replanned, reengineered, retrofitted. And the work would have to be done well, not shoddily as has so often been the case in this region.
The Policy SET Model
Authors: Valentine Scott
Published: November 2020

As outlined in Chapter 1, the main intention of this book is to identify and explain forces that catalyze or prevent a more robust diffusion of wind power in the electricity sector. This chapter lays the groundwork for such an analysis by introducing and describing the main features of a common framework that can be used for guiding analysis and development of wind power development policy. The main merit of applying a common framework to case study analysis is that it makes it possible to compare wind power policies in different nations and highlight similarities and differences. In the best case scenario, comparative analysis will unearth sufficient commonalities to construct theory to help us better understand what causes wind power to flourish in one nation and flounder in another. Even if sufficient commonalities are not uncovered, a comprehensive analysis using a common framework will at least provide insight into which issues are of greatest importance in a given national context and the scale and scope of how influential variables interconnect to shape wind power development prospects. In 1983, Thomas Hughes published a book titled Networks of Power in which he described the evolution of electrification in Western society from 1880 to 1930. In undertaking his analysis, Hughes observed that the diffusion of electrification occurred amidst a “seamless web” of social, technical, economic, and political causal factors that engender the development of a specific technological regime. In his own words:. . . Electric power systems embody the physical, intellectual and symbolic resources of the society that constructs them. Therefore, in explaining changes in the configuration of power systems, the historian must examine the changing resources and aspirations of organizations, groups and individuals. Electric power systems made in different societies—as well as in different times—involve certain basic technical components and connections, but variations in the basic essentials often reveal variations in resources, traditions, political arrangements, and economic practices from one society to another and from one time to another. In a sense, electric power systems, like so much other technology, are both causes and effects of social change. . . . Power systems reflect and influence the context, but they also develop an internal dynamic. . . .
Wind Power in China
Authors: Valentine Scott
Published: November 2020

Analyzing electricity generation sector developments in China is akin to observing a person emerging from a supermarket with a shopping cart half-full with dietary products and half-full with chocolates and other sweets and trying to determine whether or not the person is going on a diet. On the one hand, in 2009 China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG). Not only is China the world’s largest consumer (and producer) of coal; by 2030, coal consumption in China is expected to increase 41% from 2010 levels. On the other hand, China boasts a burgeoning wind power market. In 2012, nearly one of every three MW of installed wind power capacity was installed in China. As of December 2012, China enjoys top global spot in aggregate installed wind power capacity with 75,324 MW installed, 20% of global capacity. China is also the fastest growing nuclear power market in the world with 40,000 MW of installed nuclear power capacity expected by 2020. Although Deng Xiaoping passed away in 1997, his famous axiom “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice” (In Mandarin 不管白猫黑猫, 会捉老鼠就是好猫), which was invoked to describe the underlying premise behind political and market reform embraced by the Communist Party of China (CPC), still reigns true in China today. Accordingly, one cannot help but wonder what type of mice China’s laudable commitment to wind power is intended to catch. Is this a strategic initiative that will lead to China establishing new benchmarks for wind power leadership, or is it simply a small part of an all-out effort on the part of the CPC to keep up with burgeoning demand for energy in whatever way that works? In this chapter, sociopolitical economic influences on wind power development will be examined with an intention to try to explain China’s remarkable recent achievements in wind power. The reader will find that wind power policy in China is not just about energy economics; rather, it is a tale of pragmatic planning, strategic foresight, and gradualist politics.
Strings Attached
Authors: Steinberg Paul F.
Published: November 2020

Imagine for a moment that you are taking a leisurely walk on a favorite beach. As the calming sound of the waves and the wide horizon clear your mind and heighten your senses, you begin to notice the things around you. A group of birds floating on the wind. The play of light through scattered clouds. The remarkable process whereby stones too strong to break by hand have been transformed by time and ocean currents into countless sand particles crunching under your feet. These and other aspects of the natural world capture our attention and inspire natural scientists to discover their secrets. But there are other realities here that go unseen by the untrained eye, and have yet to enter into the colorful documentaries provided by scientists, journalists, and other chroniclers of the natural world. These are the social rules that pattern this physical reality. Sometimes these rules take the form of laws. In other instances they appear as building codes or product design standards. Voting rules, property rights, and constitutional guarantees count among our most powerful social rules, which also include unwritten but widely recognized principles of right and wrong that guide our actions. Our task in this chapter is to make these social rules more visible—to help you “see” the rules shaping your everyday activities, to understand something of their political origins, and to appreciate why these rules matter for the future of our planet. To begin, let us return to our stroll on the beach and see what traces of politics and power we find amid the shells and stones. First consider what is missing from the beach. Why are there no fences? Why can we walk on this beach at all? If our social rules specified that the surf and sand were available to the highest bidder, or belonged to the first party to stake a claim, we would have no more right to swim in the ocean than we would to plunge uninvited into a neighbor’s pool. In fact public access to the shoreline differs markedly from one country to the next, depending on the rules in place.
Scaling Up
Authors: Steinberg Paul F.
Published: November 2020

José Delfín Duarte rises at the crack of dawn in a neighborhood on the outskirts of San Isidro, Costa Rica. He grabs his machete and rain parka, puts on his black galoshes, and heads out in a flatbed truck up a series of muddy roads surrounded by lush forest interspersed with farms. Eventually he arrives at a small water-distribution facility located at the top of a hill overlooking the surrounding watershed. He checks the station’s tanks, carefully noting the water levels. Duarte is the elected leader of a group of local citizens who have been given responsibility for managing water resources in their community. They decide how much water is used and how it will be allocated among families and farms in the area. They collect user fees, purchase equipment, and make numerous daily decisions affecting water use. Their role stems from a power-sharing arrangement with the Costa Rican government, which in recent years has crafted similar agreements with hundreds of local water associations throughout the country. Six thousand miles to the east, Claudia Olazábal begins her day in the outer suburbs of Brussels. She takes the subway to her office in the European Commission, a sleek modern glass and steel building where she heads the Biodiversity Unit of the European Union’s Directorate General for the Environment. On this particular day, her attention is focused on the design of new rules for the control of invasive species, which pose a major threat to ecosystems worldwide. Six years in the making, this rule came about after extensive consultation with stakeholders throughout the twenty-seven member countries of Europe—farmers unions and botanic gardens, prime ministers and pet shop owners. Working with a professional staff of Swiss and Germans, Poles and Portuguese, and many other nationalities, Olazábal is preparing for a lengthy negotiation involving lawmakers throughout the continent in a complex dance that will hopefully produce a new European policy on invasive species. Claudia Olazábal and José Delfín Duarte operate worlds apart, yet they have much in common. Both are creating rules that will shape our planet for decades and even centuries to come.
The Creative Explosion
Authors: Price T. Douglas
Published: November 2020

Two related phenomena characterize the last 30,000 years or so of the Pleistocene and the Old Stone Age in Europe, a period known as the Upper Paleolithic. The first of these is the arrival of a version of ourselves, Homo sapiens, around 40,000 years ago. The second is the creative explosion in technology, equipment, raw materials, art, and decoration that took place in this period. There appears to have been a substantial upgrade in human abilities and the variety of activities taking place. The first part of this chapter examines some of the sites and places that tell this story. At the end of the Pleistocene and the Paleolithic, 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers continued to thrive in a warmer, “postglacial” Europe, but their time was coming to an end. Agriculture had been invented in the Near East and was spreading toward the continent, arriving in the southeast by 7000 BC and reaching the northeast by 4000 BC. This period of post-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in Europe is known as the Mesolithic and is the focus of the second part of this chapter. By the end of the Pleistocene, Homo sapiens had created art, invented many new tools, made tailored clothing, started counting, and spread to almost all parts of the world. As noted earlier, the oldest known representatives of anatomically modern humans have been found in East Africa, from almost 200,000 years ago. Further evidence of the activities of these individuals comes from caves around Pinnacle Point on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and dates to 165,000 years ago. This evidence is not in the form of fossil skeletons, but artifacts. Several finds—small stone blades, pieces of red ochre (an iron mineral used as a pigment), the earliest known collection and consumption of shellfish—point to new kinds of food, new tools that probably required hafting, and the use of powdered mineral as a pigment or preservative. These are firsts in the archaeological record and likely document the beginnings ative explosion witnessed more fully after 50,000 years ago.
Backpacking with the Saints
Authors: Lane Belden C.
Published: November 2020

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with Søren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.
The Allure of the Wild: Backpacking as Spiritual Practice
Authors: Lane Belden C.
Published: November 2020

For years i’ve been making solo backpacking trips into the wilderness of the Missouri Ozarks. Leaving on a Friday afternoon, I’ll invariably stuff a copy of one of the spiritual classics into my well-worn Kelty pack. I hike at times with John Ruysbroeck or Hildegard of Bingen, now and then with Rumi or Lao-tzu. Old mountains seem to invite the company of old teachers. Some of the oldest rock on the continent lies in the St. Francois Mountains of southeast Missouri. The creek beds are lined with Precambrian granite and pink rhyolite, rocks over a billion and a half years old. In terrain like this, the earth itself is an ancient teacher, illuminating in unexpected ways the text I bring with me. These trips into backcountry are my way of occasionally retreating like a hermit into an isolated place, receiving spiritual direction from an old master. Without this regular discipline every few months, my life would move off center. Experience in backcountry feeds me like nothing else in my life. I’m fascinated by how the chosen site, the embrace of solitude, and the spiritual guide I happen to take along often have a way of coming together for me. I discover the holy in the smell of pine needles, the dread of gathering storm clouds, and the ache of shoulder muscles at the end of the day. The purpose of this book is to show how wilderness backpacking can be a form of spiritual practice, what Bill Plotkin calls a “soulcraft” exercise. Exposure to the harsh realities and fierce beauties of a world not aimed at my comfort has a way of cutting through the self-absorption of my life. The uncontrolled mystery of nature puts the ego in check and invites the soul back (in more than one way) to the ground of its being. It elicits the soul’s deepest desire, enforces a rigorous discipline, and demands a life marked by activism and resistance. It reminds me, in short, that spiritual practice—far from being anything ethereal—is a highly tactile, embodied, and visceral affair.
Disillusionment: Laramie Peak and Thérèse of Lisieux
Authors: Lane Belden C.
Published: November 2020

Making mistakes in the spiritual life is an essential part of growth—as important as forest fires, blow-downs, and insects are to the life of a thriving forest. You grow only in being burnt, bent, and bitten. You have to stumble before you can walk. My error this time wasn’t intentional. I saw no signs at the trailhead and didn’t think to ask. I simply hauled my backpack up Laramie Peak in the Medicine Bow Wilderness of eastern Wyoming, planning to spend the night somewhere near the top. Only later did I learn that camping isn’t allowed anywhere on the mountain. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. More often it’s simply dangerous. Yet I had the mountain to myself that night, or I should say that it had me. I was new to backpacking at the time. But I don’t remember ever being so overwhelmed by deep silence and a haunting sense of presence as I was that night at 10,000 feet near the mountain’s peak. Fallen limbs, rock outcroppings, and thick ground cover made it impossible to venture very far off the trail. It was hard even to find a semi-flat piece of ground to sleep on in the dense, moss covered undergrowth. Everything resisted my being there. Still more disturbing was the feeling that I was being watched—studied from beyond the shadows by something I couldn’t see. I’ve seldom felt so ill at ease in wilderness. Something was out there, frightening in its apparent indifference to my well-being. Laramie Peak stands alone on the easternmost edge of the Rocky Mountains. At 10,272 feet, it is smaller than the Colorado fourteeners to the southwest. But it offers an imposing silhouette, jutting up from the northern plains like Mt. Fuji rising above the mountains west of Tokyo. One can see it for miles along Highway I-25 in eastern Wyoming. Nineteenth-century settlers on the Oregon Trail caught sight of it from Scotts Bluff in the Nebraska Territory, 120 miles to the east. It was their first warning of the foreboding mountains that lay ahead.
Solitude: Bell Mountain Wilderness and Søren Kierkegaard
Authors: Lane Belden C.
Published: November 2020

It is an uncommon gift to have a mountain to yourself. Pulling up to the trailhead for the Bell Mountain Wilderness Area, I saw no other vehicles parked there and began to hope for as much. I noticed that the dirt road into the area hadn’t been graded recently. Another good sign was my having to wipe spider webs from my face every hundred yards or so as I hit the trail. Obviously no one had been there for a while. But the real treat was reaching the top of the mountain and finding nothing. A favorite campsite lay empty, nestled in the rocks just above the treetops. From there you can look out onto thousands of acres of oak- and hickory-covered hills to the east. Not a road or a building in sight, nothing but trees. Bell Mountain is one of eight protected wilderness areas in Missouri. It is named after a family that once lived and farmed along its 1,700-foot ridge. I’d gotten a late start that day and the sun was going down by the time I set up camp. But sunlight on a late April afternoon, filtered through the yellow-green growth of new leaves, can be stunning. I sat on a rock ledge, cutting up potatoes, onions, and carrots for mulligan stew, watching shadows creep up the hills across the hollow. Putting the vegetables in a pot, I added fresh basil and rosemary, topped it off with ground beef, and washed it down with a shot of Grand Marnier as night came on. I delight in the solitude of these trips, but I’m not always sworn to a monastic austerity. Bell Mountain is a good place for the study and practice of solitude. I’ve sat there for hours with only the dog beside me, watching red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures soar on thermals rising from the forest below. Now and then you’ll see a lone eagle high overhead, though generally they nest closer to the river. Bald eagles are common in Missouri, especially in winter.
Dying: Mudlick Mountain Trail and The Cloud of Unknowing
Authors: Lane Belden C.
Published: November 2020

Everett ruess disappeared in the redrock canyons of southeast Utah in November 1934. The twenty-year-old artist, poet, and vagabond had left the town of Escalante a few days earlier, setting out with his two burros along the Hole-in-the-Rock Road toward the Colorado River. He was no stranger to wilderness, despite his youth. He had wandered the West for years. But he was never seen again. Searchers found his two burros by his campsite in a remote gulch, his footprints leading nowhere in particular, and a word recently scratched on a sandstone wall: “Nemo . . . 1934.” No one. How could the desert have swallowed him alive without leaving a trace? Was he killed by rustlers? Had he run away with Navajo Indians? What could erase him so quickly and completely from the desert landscape? The previous year he had written his brother about the irresistible joy of wild country, saying, “I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.” Apparently that’s what happened. There was no hint of suicide, no sign of violence. The mystery has never been solved. The story’s grip on the imagination is more than that of a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of backcountry travel. You stand a better chance, anyway, of being killed on city streets than on the far reaches of the Colorado Plateau. Wilderness wandering is no more inherently life-threatening than driving home on the freeway every night. What makes wild terrain seem so menacing (and yet captivating) is the deceptively comforting character of our technological society. It gives us the illusion of being in control of our environment. Wilderness, by contrast, lies beyond the reach of our managerial skills. It challenges the ego. Its threat of death is more psychological and spiritual than physical. Unfrequented canyons broach the possibility of our dying to what we’ve known in the past, losing rational control, encountering a wonderment beyond understanding. Everett Ruess perceived this potential of “dying before one dies” as something to be welcomed.
Taking Control from Above: The Rationalization of Schooling in the Progressive Era
Authors: Mehta Jal
Published: November 2020

The progressive era saw a massive rationalization of American schooling; its imprint stretches into the present day. Drawing on the ideas of (then) modern management techniques, a heterogeneous group of elites transformed a localized and highly varied system of schooling into what David Tyack famously called “the one best system.” This movement both created the form and structure of the school system that would profoundly shape later events and, as the benefit of hindsight makes evident, was driven by much the same underlying vision and set of forces that recurred in subsequent eff orts to rationalize schools. What motivated the Progressive Era transformation of schooling was the image of a rationally organized system of production. Whether in the public or private sector, the hallmarks of this approach are distinct organizational categories of work, clear delineation of roles and responsibilities, specialization of labor, and hierarchical control of workers by more powerful superiors. In the case of the school system, this meant a shift from one-room school-houses of age-mixed groups, with instruction and assessment largely decided by the teacher, to larger schools, with grades sorted by age, Carnegie units to measure student progress, and teachers’ work structured and assessed by their administrative superiors. In the larger context, one might say that this is just the story of the shift from preindustrial to industrial society, from small-scale institutions in which social connections and individual discretion were paramount to larger social organizations with systems, roles, and rules. But there are different versions of modernity, and the American school system was decisively shaped by a particularly rationalistic, scientific, and hierarchical approach to social organization. As we will see, the Progressive Era reformers were enthralled by the emerging power of scientific and business techniques that, they were convinced, would make schooling more efficient and effective. In particular, the brand of management techniques they embraced sought to shift power upwards from frontline workers (teachers) to administrative superiors, who would set goals, prescribe desired strategies, and use an early form of assessment to hold teachers accountable for their performance.
The New Story in Biology: Parts and Wholes in the Web of Life
Authors: Nadeau Robert
Published: November 2020

In July of 1969 the Apollo 11 spacecraft emerged from the dark side of the moon and the on-board camera panned through the vast emptiness of outer space. Against the backdrop of interstellar night hung the great ball of earth, with the intense blue of its oceans and the delicate ochres of its landmasses shimmering beneath the vibrant and translucent layer of its atmosphere. In the shock of this visual moment, distances between us contracted; boundaries and borders ceased to exist. But the impression that sent the adrenaline flowing through my veins was that the teeming billions of organisms writhing about under the protective layer of the atmosphere were not separate—they were interdependent, fluid, and interactive aspects of the one organic dance of the planet’s life. The preceding paragraph, an entry form my diary written a few days after images of the whole earth first appeared on television, cannot be classed as scientific analysis. But it is entirely consistent with what the new story of science has revealed about the relationship between human and environmental systems in biological reality. The large problem here is that the political and economic narratives that now serve as the basis for coordinating global human activities are premised on scientifically outmoded assumptions about this relationship in the old story of classical physics. And this problem is further complicated by the fact that the view of this relationship that is still widely viewed as scientific in Darwin’s theory of evolution is also premised on these scientifically outmoded assumptions. Darwin went public with his theory for the first time in a paper presented to the Linnean Society in 1848. This paper begins with the following sentence: “All nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature.” In The Origins of Species , Darwin is more specific about the character of this war: “There must be in every case a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.”
The Old Story: Metaphysics, Newtonian Physics, and Classical Economics
Authors: Nadeau Robert
Published: November 2020

The causes of the environmental crisis may be staggeringly complex, but the most effective way to deal with it in economic terms seems rather obvious. We must begin very soon to implement scientifically viable economic solutions for what is now a large number of very menacing environmental problems. If this could be accomplished within the framework of the theory that now serves as the basis for coordinating global economic activities, neoclassical economics, political leaders, economic planners, and environmental scientists could work together in harmony to implement these solutions. Unfortunately, this cannot happen because neoclassical economic theory is predicated on unscientific assumptions about the dynamics of market systems that effectively preclude the prospect of implementing scientifically viable economic solutions for environmental problems. These assumptions were articulated in their original form by eighteenth century moral philosophers Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo who were members of and greatly influenced by a widespread philosophical and religious movement known as deism. The fundamental impulse in this movement was to make belief in the existence of the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition consistent with the implications of the mechanistic worldview of Newtonian physics. Because physical laws in this physics completely determine the future state of physical systems, the deists concluded that the universe does not require, or even permit, active intervention by God after the first moment of creation. They then imaged God as a clockmaker and the universe as a clock regulated and maintained after its creation by physical laws. The moral philosophers we now call classical economists assumed that this deistic god created two sets of laws to govern the workings of the clockwork universe—the laws of Newtonian physics and the natural laws of economics. Based on this assumption, they argued that the forces associated with the natural laws of economics determine the movement and interactions of economic actors in much the same way that forces associated with Newton’s laws of gravity determine the movements and interactions of material objects.