And so person permanence may be the final cognitive hurdle that gets in the way of our effectively realizing the dead as they truly are—infinitely in situ, inanimate carbon residue. Instead it’s much more “natural” to imagine them as existing in some vague, unobservable locale, very much living their dead lives.

Earth’s oceans, we are reminded, form a single interconnected body of water. Its species and currents are not constrained by labels such as Atlantic and Pacific, so why should their interpretation? Sections meld seamlessly into one another, but information in each is presented in a constrained manner so that if you do, say, jump from a stuffed penguin in Poles to a preserved Coelacanth (the giant fish considered extinct until a fisherman found one off the coast of South African in 1938), a visitor can still learn or experience at each. With the exception of the Journey Through Time exhibit — which explores the slow march of evolution that began underwater — there is never a progression to follow, no order by which a visitor must read or look. In this way, touring the hall feels a lot like surfing the Web.

After a day or two, I found myself reading this anthology as if it were a series of reports from a distant planet in a distant time—as an appendix, perhaps, to Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos novels. Reading American Earth in that light helped make several things clear. First, each document in the volume is a minority report—sometimes a minority of one. The assumptions, the hopes, the arguments in nearly every one of these pieces, no matter when they were written, are contradicted by the way the vast majority of Americans live and by the political and economic structures that determine that lifestyle. Second, the fundamental environmentalist arguments—the fundamental perceptions—are unchanging over time; only the details vary. We are still catching up to Thoreau, still coming to terms with the outrage George Perkins Marsh expressed in 1864, his worries about “climatic excess” and our “restless love of change.” Third, writers in every generation take a crack at finding the crystalline argument that will induce an epiphany in skeptical readers—for nothing less than an epiphany will do to persuade them to change the way they go about living. Yet every generation fails, in part because skeptical readers so seldom pick up this kind of writing or submit to its evidence.

Her conclusion is also worth noting. She reaches for Kafka (There is infinite hope, but not for us.) and writes regretfully: I would say something different if I could. I have every faith in nature’s recuperative powers….What I doubt is our ability, as a species, to see and, having seen, to continue to pay attention.

If are not familiar with RSS and feeds, try the News Feeds from the BBC for a gentle introduction. Be sure to explore PubMed’s search help (in particular, Saving and Emailing Results and Searches) to hone your search query skills. Then create your own reading list. Or just copy any of the feeds below into your own reader.

Added a feed from a search query for transfusion medicine guidelines available at the Tripdatabase.

[sniplet tmreadinglistgrazr]

Now, why am I going to remember that for a long time to come?

Interpretation is an informal educational method used widely in museums, parks and zoos to convey the meaning and value of a place. It is very effective in a short period of time. Why? Because interpretation offers high-quality communication at the precise moment when a visitor to the museum or park is awed by their surroundings, the very definition of a teachable moment.

Mer Bleue is part of Ottawa's greenbelt system of parklands managed by the National Capital Commission (NCC), a Crown Agency of the Canadian government. It has also been designated as a Wetland of International Significance under the Ramsar Convention since October 1995. Yet, it wasn't always an internationally significant conservation area. During World War II, the Royal Canadian Air Force used this area for bombing practice. Today it is threatened by urban sprawl, the unchecked activities of beavers and those of us who don't recognizeits significance. The NCC's challenge is to deliver fascinating accounts of the ecology and the geology of the bog, and compelling stories of the French settlers that described the blue mist, and to reveal to those of us perhaps more interested in a Sunday morning walk than ecological advocacy why Mer Bleue should be interpreted at all. Why does it matter? In her book, Capital Rambles: Exploring National Capital Region, Katherine Fletcher answers that the moss mats fullfill a significant ecological niche:

…the wetland serve as "lungs" of the earth, much in the same way as mangrove trees do in the tropics. Mer Bleue bog is critical to the health of its surrounding landscape because it filters contaminants from the watershed region. It also services as natural reservoir by replenishing the water table. More than 75 percent of Ontario's wetlands have been drained, so it is particularly important that the NCC remains committed to maintaining Mer Bleue as an internationally significant conservation area (p. 75).

NCC's interpretive walk is not meant merely to entertain or disseminate facts about bogs, although it does do that. It is meant to create empathy and meaning for this special place. Remnants of the last ice age. More acidic than milk. Unique flora and fauna. On this very spot a mere 15 minutes from our front porch. Meaningful places matter to us; we are far more likely to serve as environmental stewards. The real success of the interpretive walk is that it creates the kind of empathy that ensures Mer Bleue may will survive many more thousands of years.

More

• My del.icio.us interpretation links
• La Mer Bleue: Neighbouring Carlsbad Springs offers this informative, slightly academic description of Mer Bleue bog, quite unlike the typical tourist brochures.
• A Virtual Tour of the National Capital Region: Interesting satellite imagery of the Mer Bleue bog from Satellite Impressions, which shows the different vegetation communities quite clearly.
• Capital Rambles: Exploring National Capital Region: Katherine Fletcher's insider's guide to Canada's national capital region - West Quebec (the Outaouais) and Eastern Ontario region that surround Ottawa. If you are visiting us, this book will guide you along 12 "rambles" through hills, lakes, watersheds and heritage villages, including, of course, Mer Bleu.

People are not assets. Caring isn’t just about admiring the charismatic leaders, the people that everybody likes, or the in crowd. This is the big caring we do that shows we “care, like we really mean it.” It’s about words and actions that everybody sees and recognizes. There’s an old adage that says, “People don’t care how much you know, they want to know how much you care.”

What is clear, however, is that the boundaries between the online and offline worlds are blurring as we put our hands through the looking-glass of the screen to shake hands with those on the other side, occasionally pulling them back through into what we still like to call “real life”.

I suppose there is a general perception that museum collections are dusty, static archives, and that everything in them has been carefully studied and precisely identified. But the truth is that they are much more than just long-term storage, because as our interpretive framework matures, we can begin to make sense of specimens that evaded or baffled earlier generations of researchers, or draw new conclusions about materials we mistakenly thought we had figured out ages ago.

If Obama is indeed elected the first truly Internet-enabled candidate, we should take him at his word. He does not offer himself as the agent of change, but as an advocate of the change that could be enacted by people. It is not for government to create solar power, for example, but to get out of the way of all those people who are ready to implement solar power, themselves. Responding to the willingness of people to act, he can remove regulations developed on behalf of the oil industry to restrict its proliferation.