Items

• 
  2021-07-27

  San Diego Zoo Safari Park

  Looking back at my camera roll, I chose this picture as the subject of this assignment. The picture reminded me of the first trip that I took, a year after COVID happened. The summer of 2021, my family and I were able to take a trip to San Diego, California and we decided to go to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I am a lover of nature and I enjoy the scenery and being able to appreciate the simple beauty of plants and animals. As any other normal traveler would do, I snapped a bunch of pictures as I was walking through the safari park zoo. I snapped this picture as I was on the tram and we were observing the large animals (rhinoceros, giraffes, etc.). This particular picture spoke to me, becuase I saw it as the first time I could actually enjoy the simplicity of having the means to travel and enjoy the beauty of the outside world, after being cooped up for so long. Since I live in the Phoenix area, it is not often that I get to see lily ponds or vibrant plants/animals in my area. I remember feeling free and appreciative of having the means to travel and see the outside world again.
• 
  2020-07-21

  I think I want to start a garden with you

  I decided to start a garden during the pandemic with my girlfriend at the time (now wife). It was my senior year of college and life changed drastically in the spring when the pandemic hit. My wife and I had somewhat recently started dating at this point and suddenly we had to go on lockdown together to avoid any potential spread to her family since we both were required to go in person for our jobs. We went from dating to living together in an instant and it made us grow even closer. Together we tried to find quarantine hobbies to bide our time originally thinking that quarantine would only last a few months. I remember one day suggesting we start a garden in the backyard. My yard in Lubbock got so much sun it was just perfect for a garden. We slowly built a garden adding various plants from cactus and aloe vera to hot peppers, bean sprouts, and sunflowers. I loved going out there and caring for all the plants with my wife it was a real bonding experience. It was beautiful watching the whole process of our plants transform from little seeds to baby sprouts. I remember the way the new sprouts smelled crisp as they became verdant green and leafy. When we would water them on a particularly hot day it had a scent that reminded me of rainy summer days in Dallas when it got humid. I enjoyed getting to start this hobby that I most likely wouldn't have picked up at the time if I kept to my usual college routine. It was also a good distraction for both of us from the worries and anxieties of the pandemic.
• 2020-05-31

  Hope Will Keep on Living

  The art reminded me that there is always happiness, even in the darkest of times. No matter how bad or painful things get in this life, we have to remember to just keep on living.
• 
  05/17/2020

  Urban Front Yard Victory Garden

  As worry about the food supply grows and money is more of a worry for the average person, unemployment is at rates so high it is hard for the average person to comprehend, many people have resurrected the World War II tradition of the Victory Garden. This is the garden my partner has started in the front of our home, the sunniest patch on the whole property. My partner lost his job as a direct result of the pandemic and so finds himself with less money and more time. He decided it was a perfect opportunity to try to grow our own food especially since we have already experienced shortages of various items and have no reason to believe that will change any time soon. He is planning on adding several more buckets and though the buckets themselves come from the Home Depot we are endeavoring to shop for plants, soil etc at local nurseries whenever possible so that we keep what money we are spending circulating within our own community. Photo by Ash Macnamara, Garden by David Herrick
• 
  2020-04-22

  Readying for Invasion: How the rhetoric of “Invasive Species” prepares us to be on the defensive

  This is a picture of Japanese Wineberry, surrounded by Lesser Celadine, a European species of buttercup. Both species are introduced. Lately, I have been taking a lot of walks. Getting out of the home is a luxury, now more than ever. As I walk, I have been trying to better familiarize myself with the world around me. What does it consist of? What do I recognize, what don’t I? What are the flora and fauna I am surrounded by that I fail to give my attention? I have been using the Seek app by iNaturalist to gain a better grasp of these species. What has been most striking, for me are the number of “introduced” species that exist around me. My sister and I have been making pesto out of garlic mustard, an introduced species from Europe. Brought over to be a spice, garlic mustard knows no bounds; now that I have seen it once, I see it everywhere. But we don’t readily recognize many European plants as invasive. From the beloved honey bee, to the seemingly integral “earthworm,” to the iconic Kentucky bluegrass – these species have been naturalized – on our landscapes and in our minds. As Alfred Crosby has pointed out, the introduction of species is key to ecological imperialism. And yet, in popular consciousness, we are relatively comfortable with Europe’s legacy of plants and animals that populate our landscapes. It is currently species from Asia – the Emerald Ash Borer, the stinkbug, the spotted lanternfly – that are branded “invasive,” that are campaigned against, and remarked upon for the havoc they wreak to the environment – especially the European environment that exists within America – when the grapes and stone fruit are eaten by the lanternfly. What happens when the introduced European environment is challenged by the introduced Asian environment? And what are we doing by labeling certain species “invasive” while seeing others as natural, when none of them are native to the land? We are preparing to be on the defensive. We are articulating rhetoric that builds consciousness and prepare us to be readily distrustful of Asia, to see the region as generative of harmful things that threaten the United States. We don’t see invasive species so much as a result of trade, and interaction, but rather as an “invasion” – a takeover – a biotic war waged in flora and fauna. What shifts within us when we recognize our environments as patchworks? As the knitted together histories of migration, immigration, exoticization, xenophobia. When we look at introduced species as memories, do we value them more? Do we begin to see ourselves become medleys of time and space, situated in the histories of other people’s choices? This is not to advocate on the behalf of introduced species, because I understand they can be particularly damaging to the environment. Rather, I challenge the word choice, and the placement of blame. I argue that understanding our history, and perhaps the ethnobiotic routes of the past, present, and future trajectory of species will help us undo this nationalist rhetoric, that prepares us to be suspicious, prepares us to be on the defensive, prepares us to blame Asia, or specifically China, for a wrongdoing. Perhaps this will allow us to situate the blame of our current crisis on inequalities specific to the U.S., and to failures specific to the state.
• 
  2020-04-05

  Covid-19 Landscape

  Palm Sunday, normally a high point in the social life of our church, was celebrated remotely. Palms were left outside the church to be collected by parishioners.