tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/thoreau-16468/articlesThoreau – The Conversation2020-12-23T13:41:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508272020-12-23T13:41:37Z2020-12-23T13:41:37ZThe icy backstory to that ‘clink clink’ you’ll hear when raising a toast to the end of the year<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376434/original/file-20201222-19-ks8ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=85%2C8%2C5647%2C3807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ice with a slice of history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/celebration-concept-with-hand-close-up-of-a-couple-royalty-free-image/667560414?adppopup=true">Instants/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Accompanying many a New Year’s Eve toast to the end of another seemingly endless year will be the subtle tinkling of the ice in the glass.</p>
<p>Over the festive period, people around the world will be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/opinion/2021-covid-politics.html">raising a glass to better times ahead</a>.</p>
<p>Accompanying sighs of relief will likely be the subtle tinkling of ice.</p>
<p>In researching a book on the social, medical and moral history of gin and tonic, I have imbibed – moderately – in bars from the <a href="https://www.raffles.com/singapore/dining/long-bar/">Raffles Hotel in Singapore</a> to the <a href="https://www.experienceoxfordshire.org/venue/randolph-hotel-morse-bar/">Morse Bar in Oxford</a>. At each venue, my G&T was always served over ice.</p>
<p>The history of chilled drinks goes back to antiquity. But it was the innovative “frozen water” trade from New England to India in the mid-19th century that popularized ice.</p>
<h2>Frigid luxury</h2>
<p>By that time, ice had been used to chill the drinks for millennia – but only ever for the elite. </p>
<p>Chilled wine was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2016/07/31/pass-me-a-cold-one-a-short-history-of-refrigerating-wine-and-beer/?sh=5789b0e74e2e">all the rage in first-century Rome</a>. Ice chunks were <a href="http://www.expo2015.org/magazine/en/economy/a-short-history-of-ice-cream--from-ancient-roman-snow-to-love-with-a-heart-of-cream.html">brought down from the summits</a> of Mounts Vesuvius and Etna to <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/books/0415186242/">chill the food and drink of the wealthy</a>. Roman author <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Pliny_the_Younger/">Pliny the Younger</a> ascribes to Emperor Nero both the invention of the ice bucket and <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0132%3Alife%3Dnero%3Achapter%3D48">the chilling of water</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/037698360703400216">Mughal emperor</a> <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/india/delhi/humayun/humayun.html">Humayun</a> chilled summer fruit juice into a frozen sherbet in the mid-1500s. He used ice shavings from huge blocks of ice he transported on muleback from Kashmir to the capital city of Delhi. To keep it from melting, the ice was treated with potassium nitrate, <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/an-interesting-tale-of-the-business-of-ice-and-its-history-in-india/articleshow/20252095.cms?from=mdr">otherwise known as saltpetre</a>. By the 18th century the Mughals were so dependent upon ice for chilling both food and palaces that they built large “baraf khana,” or ice houses, to store the product.</p>
<p>Across the world in 17th-century Florence, the ruling Medici family would host elaborate feasts featuring tabletop mountain ranges sculpted from ice made by chilling water in winter. They also acted as patrons to <a href="https://www.florenceinferno.com/the-invention-of-ice-cream-in-florence-history-and-legend/">Bernardo Buontalenti, the pioneer of modern-day ice cream</a>.</p>
<p>But until the early 1800s, only emperors and the fabulously wealthy enjoyed the cooling effects of ice.</p>
<h2>Cool customers</h2>
<p>That changed with a young man from Boston. <a href="https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/frederic-tudor-1806-brings-cocktails-and-ice-cream-world/">Frederic Tudor</a> was born in 1783 to a wealthy Boston family who summered on a pond in Rockwood, just north of the city. There, they enjoyed ice cream and chilled drinks thanks to ice harvested in winter and stored in an ice house.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376427/original/file-20201222-15-1bxwa7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph of Frederic Tudor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Frederic%20tudor">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When his brother, William, quipped that they should harvest ice from the estate’s pond and sell it in the tropics, Frederic took the notion seriously. He begged and borrowed from his <a href="https://www.library.hbs.edu/Citations/SC-Books/The-Ice-King-Frederic-Tudor-and-His-Circle">social network</a>, which included Revolutionary War heroes and merchant elite, to fund his ice enterprise. </p>
<p>According to Tudor’s diary, <a href="https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/frederic-tudor-the-ice-king">held at the Harvard Business School</a>, he started shipping ice to <a href="https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/frederic-tudor-1806-brings-cocktails-and-ice-cream-world/">the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1806</a>. But islanders remained unconvinced of the benefits of chilling. The ice melted on the dock, and Tudor landed in debtors prison, owing over US$5,000 to his patrons.</p>
<p>Despite this setback, <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22407/surprisingly-cool-history-ice">Tudor’s entrepreneurial spirit</a> was said to be undimmed. By 1826 he had garnered enough business to hire noted inventor <a href="https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/biographies/nathaniel-wyeth-biography/#.X-IFxOlKhp8">Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth</a> as foreman for his company – The Tudor Ice Co. Wyeth created new types of saws, pulleys, iron grids and hoisters needed for <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/04/ice-king/">efficient ice harvesting</a>. He cut huge blocks of ice from Fresh Pond in Cambridge using horse-drawn ice cutters, and moved them via rail to ships in the Boston and Salem harbors. </p>
<p>From there, the world awaited.</p>
<h2>Ice houses of India</h2>
<p>In 1833 Tudor was approached by <a href="http://charlestownbridge.com/2020/09/16/historic-houses-of-the-month-frederic-tudor-and-charlestowns-ice-trade/">Samuel Austin, a merchant of silks and spices</a>, to ship ice to Calcutta, modern-day Kolkata, 16,000 miles away, as ballast to add weight to his empty ships. Austin knew that the colonial British in India were frightened of the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-did-people-get-ice">tropical heat</a>, believing it to be deadly, and they often escaped to the hills during the endless summer. </p>
<p>So on May 12, 1833, the ship <a href="https://scroll.in/article/720912/how-ice-shipped-all-the-way-from-america-became-a-luxury-item-in-colonial-india">Tuscany sailed from Boston for Calcutta</a>, its hold filled with 180 tons of ice cut during the previous winter. When it arrived <a href="http://failuremag.com/article/cool-customer">in Calcutta</a> four months later, the ship still held 100 tons of ice. It meant Tudor could sell his superior ice at just 3 pence for a pound, undercutting his rivals who sold dirtier ice for much higher.</p>
<p>When news of the ice in Calcutta circulated, British merchants in Bombay, modern-day Mumbai, excitedly raised money to build an ice house in the city’s docks. Initially, demand was limited to the British and Parsis – Persians settled in India – but Tudor’s low prices and superior commodity soon ensured that most elite Indians had access to cold beverages through their homes, clubs and restaurants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376484/original/file-20201222-23-14u2wvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dome of Mumbai’s Ice House can be seen nestled between a church and courthouse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bombay_courthouse1850.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bombay’s <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/an-interesting-tale-of-the-business-of-ice-and-its-history-in-india/articleshow/20252095.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst">ice trade with the U.S.</a> was robust and continued through much of the 19th century, when, during the American Civil War, Indian cotton was used to fill the empty ice ships returning home.</p>
<p>By 1853 India became Tudor’s most lucrative destination, with Calcutta alone <a href="https://pazhayathu.blogspot.com/2012/02/water-cooler-air-conditioning-before.html">yielding an estimated $220,000 in profits</a>.</p>
<p>A few of the structures built to accommodate the trade still exist today. A decade ago, I visited an ice house in Madras, modern-day Chennai – now known as Vivekananda House – an <a href="https://sriramv.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/lost-landmarks-of-chennai-the-syrian-roof-at-ice-house/">engineering marvel</a>. British military engineer Col. J.J. Collingwood borrowed a Syrian roofing technique for the ice tower – a domed structure built using clay cylinders. This roof kept the ice very cool, as it was doubly insulated.</p>
<h2>On Walden Pond</h2>
<p>The American naturalist Henry David Thoreau noted the trade in the winter of 1846. After observing a crew of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-02b44e78-2da1-4a27-bcc5-dd0de5f38b20">100 ice cutters</a> of the Tudor Ice Co. at work on Walden Pond, <a href="https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Walden16PondInWinter.pdf">he wrote</a>, “The sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376432/original/file-20201222-17-1mrgngn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spy Pond, Massachusetts, Ice Harvesting from a print.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Ice_Harvesting%2C_Massachusetts%2C_early_1850s.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It wasn’t just India. Ice cut in New England was transported to Singapore, Jamaica, Havana, New Orleans and Hong Kong.</p>
<p>As well as being able to deliver in bulk, Tudor also marketed the quality of his ice. His claim that the ice of Wenham Lake – 10 miles North of Boston – was the “purest” in the world spawned many imitators. In 1844, a competitor, The Wenham Lake Ice Co., <a href="https://friendsofim.com/2020/07/23/icy-regents-canal/#:%7E:text=In%201844%2C%20the%20Wenham%20Lake%20Ice%20Company%20opened,from%20outside%20the%20store%20looking%20into%20the%20window.">opened an ice store </a> in <a href="https://www.victorianlondon.org/publications8/socialbees-00.htm">The Strand, London</a>, where it displayed a large block of ice with a newspaper placed behind it so that passersby could read the print through the frozen water.</p>
<h2>Ice King on the rocks</h2>
<p>The Tudor Ice Co. flourished despite competition. In December 1847, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/frederic-tudor-1773831">The Sunbury American </a> newspaper reported that 22,591 tons of ice were shipped to foreign ports. </p>
<p>In the space of 40 years, Tudor had <a href="https://todayinsci.com/T/Tudor_Frederic/IceTradeAmericaToIndia.htm">built an ice empire</a>, block by block, earning him the moniker the “Ice King.” </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>But the icy winds of change were blowing. In 1844, the American inventor John Gorrie, a doctor who specialized in treating malaria – also related to the birth of the G&T – had <a href="http://www.phys.ufl.edu/%7Eihas/gorrie/fridge.htm">produced a prototype of the modern air conditioner</a>. </p>
<p>In 1851, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2008/07/dayintech-0714/">Gorrie received a U.S. patent </a>for one of the world’s first ice-making machines, and by 1860 he was successful in making ice through artificial refrigeration. Meantime, the New England lakes grew <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-did-people-get-ice">dirty with pollution</a> from coal-fired railroads.</p>
<p>The Tudor Ice Co.’s market declined precipitously; the <a href="https://historywithkev.com/2020/08/25/the-civil-war-the-ice-trade-and-the-rise-of-the-ice-machine/">company closed in 1887</a>. </p>
<p>Tudor had died earlier in Boston, in the middle of winter, 1864. By that time, he had created what the ice industry now defines as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/10/super-cubes-inside-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-packaged-ice#:%7E:text=Within%20The%20Ice%20Co%2C%20they,key%20component%20of%20their%20offering.">the clink effect</a>” – the ability of ice cubes to recall a host of positive associations – around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tulasi Srinivas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The history of ice in drinks goes back to antiquity. But it only really got going when a Bostonian started exporting ice to the British in colonial India.Tulasi Srinivas, Professor of Anthropology, Religion and Transnational Studies, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1370452020-05-19T12:17:32Z2020-05-19T12:17:32ZCOVID-19 is eroding scientific field work – and our knowledge of how the world is changing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334157/original/file-20200511-49546-1auahd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C2048%2C1358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Collecting data on invasive plants, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, California.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/VSnKr3">Connar L'Ecuyer/NPS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Summer is prime time across much of North America for scientists to do field research outdoors. But this year the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing many researchers to cancel or scale back their plans. We asked two scholars to explain the long-term effects of a missed or downscaled field research season.</em></p>
<p><em>Richard B. Primack, Boston University</em></p>
<h2>Holes in the data</h2>
<p>For the first time in 50 years, ornithologists at the <a href="https://www.manomet.org/">Manomet nature observatory</a> in Plymouth, Massachusetts are not opening their mist nets every weekday at dawn to catch, measure and band migrating songbirds. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the center has essentially canceled its spring field season and will be doing only very limited sampling. Going forward, its long-term banding data will contain only a fraction of the usual information on songbird migrations during the spring of 2020. </p>
<p>Across the world, field stations, nature centers and universities have <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108571">shut down long-term research</a> to protect scientists, staff, students and volunteers from COVID-19. There’s good reason for this step, but it comes at a cost.</p>
<p>Collecting data over many years allows scientists to detect gradual trends and short-term anomalies in the health of forests, bays and other ecosystems and biological communities. Long-term research has been crucial in detecting how climate change is affecting the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1206432">abundance and distribution of species</a> and the timing of spring events, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222232">bird migrations</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13224">plant flowering</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334152/original/file-20200511-49579-r7t7jl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marking snowmelt plots at the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site in Colorado.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lternet.edu/site-image-galleries/?site_id=1920">E. Zambello/LTER Network</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Multi-year data has been vital to understanding how ecosystems bounce back after major disturbances like hurricanes and <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-forests-rebounded-from-yellowstones-epic-1988-fires-and-why-that-could-be-harder-in-the-future-101495">wildfires</a>. Long-term research has informed policies addressing <a href="https://lternet.edu/findings/acid-rain/">air and water pollution</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.03.031">wildlife conservation</a>in ways that would have been impossible through short-term studies alone.</p>
<p>Since 1980, the U.S. National Science Foundation has supported a network of <a href="https://lternet.edu/site/#">Long Term Ecological Research sites</a> that now spans 28 locations, from northern Alaska to Antarctica and across North America. These sites are leaders in detecting effects of air pollution, land use and urbanization on ecosystems. The data they produce is available to the public and the scientific community.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334151/original/file-20200511-30864-1kjnn2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sites in the U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research network, identified by their acronyms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lternet.edu/documents/lter-network-map/">LTER Network</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many long-term studies also take place in national parks, where researchers track subjects like water quality, wetland health and endangered species. In a normal year, armies of researchers and students would be at work in national parks and Long-Term Ecological Research sites. Now, however, just small groups are collecting data, aided by automated equipment.</p>
<h2>Working solo</h2>
<p>Some small-scale projects are managing to continue. Over the past 18 years, <a href="https://www.rprimacklab.com">my students</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XfgB_BUAAAAJ&hl=en">and I</a> have recorded <a href="https://doi.org/10.1890/07-0068.1">wildflower flowering</a> and <a href="https://www.americanscientist.org/article/spring-budburst-in-a-changing-climate">the first appearance of spring leaves</a> in Concord, Massachusetts, repeating observations made by Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s. </p>
<p>We’re doing this to study the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo8829988.html">ecological effects of climate change</a>. Our studies have shown that plants are flowering about 10 days earlier in the spring than they did in Thoreau’s time. We have also found that cold-loving northern wildflower species are becoming less abundant, and nonnative species are increasing.</p>
<p>Now I wear a mask, go out early in the mornings when few people are on the trails and work without students. None of this is how we typically work, but it allows me to continue this research and capture anomalies that might occur this year. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332010/original/file-20200501-42903-1ndfi60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Primack wears a face mask while repeating Henry David Thoreau’s spring flowering and leafing observations in Concord, Massachusetts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Primack</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But maintaining a few long-term studies won’t make up for irreplaceable losses to science that will occur this year, especially for two-year experimental studies that were supposed to start or end this year. My colleagues and I hope that this pandemic ends soon, so that scientists can get back to analyzing the long-term workings of ecosystems – and the ecological impacts of coronavirus.</p>
<p><strong><em>Casey Setash, Colorado State University</em></strong></p>
<h2>Abundant uncertainty</h2>
<p>Ecologists <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KRhLLdAAAAAJ&hl=en">like me</a> often measure a field season by the numbers: 40 birds captured, 85 nest plots searched, three times when the truck got stuck. This year we’re thinking about Colorado’s coronavirus case count.</p>
<p>My field site sits at an elevation of about 8,500 feet in northern Colorado’s Jackson County. The landscape and lifestyles here have remained largely unchanged over the last century. Jackson is also one of the few counties in Colorado without a positive case of COVID-19. </p>
<p>I’m conducting field work that will inform my dissertation on waterfowl breeding in flood-irrigated agricultural systems, as well as a long-term waterfowl monitoring project run by <a href="https://cpw.state.co.us/">Colorado Parks and Wildlife</a>. Answering my proposed questions requires capturing 40 female <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/mallard">mallards</a> and <a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gadwall/id">gadwall</a>, two common duck species. We mark them with GPS transmitters, conduct biweekly samples in the flooded fields for invertebrates – small crustaceans that ducks eat – and carry out daily nest searches within a 250-square-mile area. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334389/original/file-20200512-82370-1avjixj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dawn at Casey Setash’s research site in northern Colorado.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Casey Setash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2020 field season is the second of three field seasons that I will conduct for my Ph.D., and I had plans to hit the ground running. Instead, we have whittled our six-person crew down to three and are living in trailers without running water, rather than in U.S. Forest Service housing that normally would be available.</p>
<p>Our daily routine of cold mornings counting ducks, checking traps and searching for nests feels familiar and comforting. But every task is tinged with worry and guilt. What if we introduce COVID-19 to Jackson County? How are we going to attach GPS transmitters to ducks – a process that usually takes at least two people – while maintaining proper social distancing measures? Scientists are used to estimating uncertainty, but almost everything this year is a question mark. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334392/original/file-20200512-82366-12aoa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colorado Parks & Wildlife technician Ella Engelhard with a tagged gadwall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Casey Setash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Waterfowl ecologists were among the first scientists to initiate <a href="https://www.fws.gov/birds/surveys-and-data/population-surveys.php">long-term ecological monitoring</a> in the 1950s. Today, states still base decisions about hunting limits on annual surveys of ducks breeding throughout the <a href="https://www.ducks.org/conservation/where-ducks-unlimited-works/prairie-pothole-region">Prairie Pothole Region</a> of the northern Great Plains, also known as the <a href="https://www.fws.gov/prairiesconservation/pdfs/PrairiesConservation_infographic_031814_Updated.pdf">duck factory of North America</a>. </p>
<p>Long-term projects like these often are replacement data sources when studies like mine go awry. But this year, for the first time since 1955, neither the <a href="https://fws.gov/">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service</a> nor the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Wildlife_Service">Canadian Wildlife Service</a> will carry out their Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey. </p>
<p>While safety precautions are changing everything, from the amount of data we can collect to the social structure of our field crew, I am one of the lucky few who get to keep working. My field site lies in a sweet spot, between “too far from a hospital” and “too many people.” And it is comforting to be outside with some semblance of normalcy, rather than sitting indoors wondering what the ducks are up to.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s newsletter explains what’s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-daily">Subscribe now</a>.</em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The COVID-19 pandemic is interrupting scientific field work across North America, leaving blank spots in important data sets and making it harder to track ecological change.Richard B. Primack, Professor of Biology, Boston UniversityCasey Setash, PhD student in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819262017-08-02T01:18:45Z2017-08-02T01:18:45ZHenry David Thoreau’s views of 19th-century media resonate today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180632/original/file-20170801-11176-bed2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A statue of Henry David Thoreau in front of a replica of his cabin in Concord, Massachusetts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdevers/3406482602/">Chris Devers</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world knows Henry David Thoreau as a writer whose perspectives on nature and society remain relevant today.</p>
<p>This summer, Thoreau would have turned 200 years old. What would he say about the media itself, now that Americans must navigate the turbulent waters of fake news and “alternative facts” to find some fabled island of truth?</p>
<p>The media landscape of the 1840s and 1850s was similar to the one we see today: pervasive, influential and sometimes questionable – in both taste and credibility.</p>
<p>The medium of choice was the newspaper, which was as ubiquitous – physically and in the American imagination – as the internet is today. </p>
<p>Writing in the 1840s, travel writer Alexander Mackay <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=h8QRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=mackay+%22they+meet+him+at+every+turn%22&source=bl&ots=P6tIp3SyFX&sig=B2iBdyPcnR66PRU8a9_8BOSGwsk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX3cfv4bbVAhUnw4MKHaLcCg0Q6AEIKjAB#v=onepage&q=mackay%20%22they%20meet%20him%20at%20every%20turn%22&f=false">described</a> the “extraordinary number” of newspapers that a traveler would encounter “On board the steamer and on the rail, in the countinghouse and the hotel, in the street and the private dwelling, in the crowded thoroughfare and in the remotest rural district.” </p>
<p>Thoreau, on the other hand, was more appalled than dazzled. </p>
<p>In fact, he loathed newspapers, denouncing them for a variety of offenses, including “servility” and outright baseness. </p>
<p>“I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column,” he <a href="http://www.transcendentalists.com/slavery_in_ma.htm">wrote</a> of one Boston paper. </p>
<p>At the heart of Thoreau’s dispute with journalism were questions that are still relevant today: What is the truth? Where and how do we find it?</p>
<p>Americans, then and now, often turn to journalism for one form of truth: factual accounts of current events. For that reason, we worry when we have reason to think, because of irresponsible journalists or their sources, that what we read has little basis in reality. </p>
<p>Thoreau would have sympathized. “Let us settle ourselves,” <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/walden/walden.html">he wrote</a> in “Walden,” “and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe…till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality…”</p>
<p>Still, Thoreau had a deeper concern, also timely. He worried that journalists and their readers, despite the facts at their disposal, were missing the truth. Instead of capturing and conveying deeper principles, they were reporting mundane details and happenings. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180631/original/file-20170801-21062-1w2saoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thoreau was concerned primarily with the ‘essential facts of life.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/eflon/5073090316/">eflon</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident,” <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/walden/hdt02.html">he wrote</a>, “or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter – we never need read of another. One is enough.”</p>
<p>Add to this list the shenanigans of reality TV, the gossip of supermarket tabloids and the barrage of social media likes and tweets, and it’s easy to guess how Thoreau would react to the modern media.</p>
<p>For him, all of these facts constituted a different form of misinformation. They might be real, but they are not essential – in both senses of the word. They are not necessary, and they don’t capture the essence of the world, the deeper truths that really matter.</p>
<p>For these truths, Thoreau looked elsewhere: to the beans, to the sand and to the other hard realities he found in the woods. </p>
<p>He framed “Walden” as a kind of dispatch from nature, a more reliable source of the truth that lay beneath the superficial details of the ordinary world. He was, <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/walden/hdt01.html">he said</a>, “trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express,” adding that “If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence.” In short, because traditional newspapers were more interested in the trivial details of politics, Thoreau tasked himself with reporting truths through his own form of journalism. We call it “literature.” </p>
<p>What is truth? Where and how do we find it? A century and a half ago, Thoreau provided some promising leads. Facts, he believed, have their place – they were part of reality, after all – but facts alone do not constitute essential truth. </p>
<p>If we agree, it’s up to us to demand accurate reporting of the “news” that matters. We may find such news in newspapers, but we would be wise to seek it elsewhere, as well. Ears to the wind, eyes on our books, critical minds controlling them both, only then can we drain the flood of distortions and stand on the “hard bottom” of truth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Canada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thoreau spent his life pursuing the ‘hard bottom’ of truth. But he confronted a sensationalist newspaper industry that, in many ways, mimicked today’s media environment.Mark Canada, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807302017-07-11T08:14:52Z2017-07-11T08:14:52ZWhy Thoreau, born 200 years ago, has never been more important<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177507/original/file-20170710-29710-gl8eop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Walden_Pond,_2010.jpg">Walden Pond. Ekabhishek/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” urges American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/24/100-best-nonfiction-books-walden-henry-david-thoreau">Walden</a> (1854), his account of living frugally in a log cabin near Concord, Massachusetts. “Let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.” </p>
<p>This imperative in Thoreau towards contraction rather than expansion made enemies of those in his period who were committed to America’s dizzying industrial and technological progress: “I prefer walking on two legs,” Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier sniffily remarked. And if Thoreau’s contemporaries sometimes recoiled in distaste from his radical downsizing, even greater resistance to his work might be anticipated from readers in our own moment. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau">Thoreau</a>, born 200 years ago on July 12 1817, appears at first glance strikingly ill-adapted for the modern West. While it has long been fashionable to assert that, were he alive now, Shakespeare would seamlessly have tweaked his creative mode and written for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m86d">EastEnders</a>, few would make comparable predictions of Thoreau’s success in the contemporary mediascape. The only Twittersphere to interest him would be that occupied by blue-jays and redstarts. Impossible to imagine, also, is him uploading to Instagram photos of his cabin at Walden, or of Maine woodlands and Cape Cod beaches (subjects of two other major books).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177508/original/file-20170710-29726-1a40n4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Henry David Thoreau, 1856.</span>
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<p>Even the slowly dribbling “news feed” of mid-19th-century New England was seemingly too much for Thoreau, experienced as irritation to the point of pain. “For my part, I could easily live without the post-office,” he writes in Walden, seemingly excusing himself from circuits of worldly communication in order to retreat more effectively into the contemplative mode he practises by his Massachusetts pond. A tendency in Thoreau towards inwardness or self-reliance looks startlingly out of kilter with our networked world. From Walden, again: “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” Here is the transcendentalist appearing withdrawn, anti-social, even potentially sociopathic.</p>
<p>But if there may be something off-putting about Thoreau’s work for contemporary readers, there are also elements that should invigorate. The occasion of his bicentenary prompts us to identify several ways in which he continues to speak eloquently to us. For his critique of commodity culture and his sensitivity to environmental degradation, Thoreau has in fact never been more indispensable than he is now.</p>
<h2>Dazzled by gold</h2>
<p>One of the most damning portraits in Walden is of the ruthlessly acquisitive farmer Flint, “who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him”. Flint is mesmerised, too, by “the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent.” How can this not resonate at a time when the US president himself is dazzled almost to blindness by the gold dripping off each interior surface of Trump Tower?</p>
<p>There is a shimmering appeal to consumer products to which Thoreau is remarkably unresponsive. Few people, perhaps, will want to emulate him in the degree to which he gives up money, goods, <em>stuff</em>. But when he urges Walden’s reader to “cultivate poverty like a garden herb”, his own class privilege goes unquestioned. What about all those for whom poverty is fate, not lifestyle choice? </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Thoreau’s acute observations in Walden of how people are imprisoned or suffocated by their commodities throw down a challenge to us. Perhaps, he writes, “a man is not required to bury himself [in] superfluous property”? Thoreau is thus the laureate of decluttering, helping us to imagine alternatives to our beguilement by consumer experience. </p>
<h2>Turning to the woods</h2>
<p>“Nature excels in the least things,” writes Thoreau in an essay titled “Huckleberries”. His own writing is similarly fine-grained in its attention to ecological detail. If he was parsimonious in domestic economy, he was prodigal in descriptions of nature, spending words extravagantly. Think, say, of the journal entry for his 34th birthday in 1851, when he evokes a skunk on a “bare garden hill”, a “foolish robin” and a “lightning bug [with its] greenish light”. Such moments valuably reawaken us to the sights and textures of our natural world, giving this potentially some traction against its erasure in favour – Trumpishly – of an oil pipeline or golf course.</p>
<p>For if there is a poetics of nature in Thoreau, there is always also a politics. His sensuous zoology and botany strikes “a counter-establishment stance”, as US literary critic Lawrence Buell <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/new-essays-walden?format=PB#ibcwwJ8ztjh3lXWi.97">puts it</a>. </p>
<p>But this is not to say that in his work Thoreau retreats complacently into the woods. Consider a moment in the essay “A Yankee in Canada” when the reddening leaves remind him of an American genocide then still in progress: “An Indian warfare was waged through the forest.” Arboreal description gives way, by a sudden change of focus, to sardonic political commentary. </p>
<p>The passage is characteristic of the social engagement of Thoreau’s writing. In reading his work as he turns 200, we do not, after all, find simply a regressive or detached figure. Rather, we encounter a writer who frequently provides us with valuable intellectual and rhetorical resources to take into our ongoing struggles in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dix does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Henry David Thoreau might appear to be very ill-adapted for the modern West – but his writing contains some striking lessons for the modern world.Andrew Dix, Lecturer in American Studies, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/406822015-04-29T09:57:29Z2015-04-29T09:57:29ZA dean’s plea: let students discover knowledge without pressure to impress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79516/original/image-20150427-18136-11orpsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students no longer have the time for self-discovery. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=3Tba1wM1vW1aRb2ip2Hutw&searchterm=college%20day%201&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=112544996">Student image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is today’s competitive environment making high school students pursue a polished resume and not their passion? </p>
<p>As a university vice president and an admissions dean, we’ve just finished contacting students whom we did admit, did not admit and would have liked to admit, but simply couldn’t. </p>
<p>Regardless of outcome, each group had in its midst students who have been caught up in the growing phenomenon of credentialism, a practice of relying on formal qualifications, that too often undermines what should be four wonderful years of self-discovery in high school.</p>
<h2>More than a numbers game</h2>
<p>Whether it’s taking an <a href="http://www.challengesuccess.org/Portals/0/Docs/ChallengeSuccess-AdvancedPlacement-WP.pdf">Advance Placement course</a> that really doesn’t interest them, holding office in an organization because it will “look good,” on their resume or playing a sport that they really don’t enjoy, students are too often trying to impress, instead of trying to discover, enjoy and grow. </p>
<p>Every student seeking admission to college wants to present a “strong case.” </p>
<p>But what’s becoming increasingly clear to admission officers like me and to guidance counselors who advise high school students, is that “credentialism” is being practiced more and more by students, high schools and institutions of higher learning. </p>
<p>To some degree we have ourselves to blame. </p>
<p>College <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bschools/rankings/undergraduate_mba_profiles">rankings</a> rely heavily on metrics and lets face it, people love being on the “A” list. In some cases, the metrics are about the school; in others, about the students who apply and are admitted.</p>
<p>We begin, despite our best intentions, to question not whether a student is a good match for our institution but how admitting the student will affect our “profile.” </p>
<p>Too often I worry that colleges feel obligated to play the “numbers” game and admit students solely on the basis of board scores, grade scores, number of AP courses, number of extracurricular activities, number of recommendations and so on.</p>
<h2>Students are not pursuing their passion</h2>
<p>As a result, many students – urged on by their parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and, yes, colleges and universities – conduct their lives as though the only purpose is to build a resume to get into the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-best-brightest-and-saddest.html?_r=0">“best”</a> school they can.</p>
<p>So what’s wrong with that? </p>
<p>For colleges and universities,that means we assess students on professed interest and performance that don’t always reflect what the student is really all about and capable of doing. And that’s not good for the student or the institution. </p>
<p>It subverts our desire not just to recruit and admit a class but to create a class, one whose members will thrive synergistically, often energized more by their differences than by their similarities.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79517/original/image-20150427-18156-lj0fzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Students end up chasing the right courses to get into the right colleges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=3Tba1wM1vW1aRb2ip2Hutw&searchterm=college%20day%201&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=137713628">Student image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>For students, it turns their high school careers into a grab bag of experiences, many of which were pursued to impress others rather than for self-discovery and the pursuit of interests and excellence for their own sake.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. </p>
<p>Many students are truly driven by the best motivations to understand their interests, abilities, and aspirations.</p>
<p>But too many are told they need to go to the right schools, study the right courses, participate in the right activities, have the right friends, volunteer for the right programs, plan for the right careers…and on and on. </p>
<p>What often results is an early and unwelcome appreciation for Thoreau’s observation that, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”</p>
<p>Too many students fail to understand that they are quintessentially “a work in progress,” always in the process of becoming, never finished. (Most adults aren’t much different.) </p>
<p>And in our rush to help them prepare for the rest of their lives, we prevent them from taking full advantage of what’s going on right now in their lives.</p>
<p>Students deserve better, from everybody who is pressuring them to display success to impress rather than for its inherent self-worth. </p>
<h2>Colleges need to restore love for learning</h2>
<p>Can colleges and universities help? </p>
<p>We can proclaim that we seek more than numbers, more than honors, more than achievement for its promotional value. And we can demonstrate our commitment by accepting students whose accomplishments are rooted in exploration, passion, self-discovery and even plain old fun.</p>
<p>We tell students that college is a launching pad for successful careers and lives. And that’s what it should be.</p>
<p>Both high schools and colleges may do students a grave disservice if we suggest that resume-building trumps exploration in pursuit of self-awareness and fulfillment.</p>
<p>So what should we be telling our young people as they undertake their journey to what we pray will be successful lives and careers?</p>
<p>Here are some things that I suggest to help guide that journey:</p>
<ul>
<li>Establish what really matters to you so you’ll have a compass.</li>
<li>Invest in yourself. You have gifts that need to be developed.</li>
<li>Do the best with what you have. It’s OK if you aren’t good at some things.</li>
<li>Take risks. But be smart about it.</li>
<li>Own it – it’s your life. Take responsibility for it.</li>
<li>Build integrity; above all else, this is what matters.</li>
<li>Find mentors who inspire you.</li>
</ul>
<p>This isn’t meant to be a “feel good” list. </p>
<p>And it isn’t just a list meant for the students. We must remain committed to a holistic evaluation. </p>
<p>As educators, we need to restore equity, perspective and a reverence for excellence for its own sake. </p>
<p>We need to connect our kids with the wisdom – from family, friends and trusted institutions – that previously helped each generation blossom, for their individual and collective benefit.</p>
<p>If we can’t come together to change the system, then shame on us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joann McKenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pursuit to get into the best colleges has taken out the joy of learning from students’ lives.Joann McKenna, Vice President for Enrollment Management, Bentley UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.