Can a Piano Sing a Birdsong?
The French composer Olivier Messaien attempted to reproduce the calls of 80 European birds in a three-hour piece for solo piano. Did he succeed?
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From TNT to Tallgrass: Prairie Restoration at a Munitions Plant Turned National Grassland
It was the world’s largest munitions plant. Now it’s a rich grassland teeming with wildflowers, hikers, and even a bison herd. Illinois’s Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie offers an environmental success story for our time.
Bittersweet Catch: Korea’s Diving Women and the Pitfalls of Cultural Preservation
While attending a school set up to train the next generation of haenyeo divers, one woman grapples with the historical and ongoing complexities of maintaining the traditional practice.
NASA and the Explosive 1960s: A Conversation with Neil Maher
The author of the new book “Apollo in the Age of Aquarius” shows how NASA shaped, and was shaped by, 1960s environmentalism, feminism, conservatism, counterculture, antiwar protests, and the black freedom struggle.
Knowing Prairies: An Essay in Comic Form
What can the world’s first restored prairie tell us about living with the land? The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum inspires one artist to reflect on ecological restoration and what we call nature.
The Land Ethic Revisited: Individualism vs. Morality
How can a community implement Aldo Leopold’s notion of the land ethic? Kenya’s Njuri Ncheke councils offer an example, balancing individual and group agency.
Love for Home in a Place Industry Left Behind
When the mines closed throughout Wisconsin’s Gogebic Range, its population collapsed. But many left their hearts there. Now some are even moving back.
Black Branding and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.
Who should be allowed to brand a neighborhood? A review of Derek Hyra’s new book, “Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City,” examining transformations in the Shaw/U Street neighborhood of the nation’s capital.
Ole Miss and the Shadow of Slavery: A Conversation with Jeffrey Jackson and Charles Ross
Ivy League institutions are scrambling to uncover their links to the history of slavery. But the University of Mississippi—built by slaves, amid slave plantations, for slaveowners to teach future slaveowners—might offer the richest insights into the nation’s unshakable ties to centuries of bondage.
The Art of Anxious Environments
Through art, Yayoi Kusama takes an extreme challenge, mental illness, and connects to millions, inviting viewers into the curious and profound beauty of her interior world. Encountering Kusama’s art inspired the author of this essay to reach through her own “a wall of silence” and use art to express her anxious environment.
