Search Results for: animals

Vagabonds, Crafty Bauds, and the Loyal Huzza: A History of London at Night

Photo by Garry Knight

Matthew Beaumont | Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London | Verso | March 2015 | 37 minutes (10,129 words)

 

Below is a chapter excerpted from Nightwalking, by Matthew Beaumont, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky. In this excerpt, Beaumont describes the complex and transgressive act of nightwalking in London during the 16th & 17th centuries. He paints a vivid picture of the city at night and explains what nightwalking revealed about class, status, and the political and religious leanings of those who practiced it. The plight of the jobless and homeless poor in this era, which also witnessed the birth of capitalism, are dishearteningly familiar today.

Beaumont draws on a variety of compelling sources, which have been linked to when possible, such as Beware the Cat, a puzzling English proto-novel that features a man who attains cat-like superpowers, The Wandring Whore and The Wandring Whore Continued, and A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, Vulgarly Called Vagabonds, which defines, among other things, the 24 types of vagabond.  Read more…

What Makes a Job a Calling?

 

In a 2009 paper for Administrative Science Quarterly, J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson studied zookeepers and found that the profession was about the closest anyone in the modern, secular world comes to having a calling—the sort of intensely meaningful career that Martin Luther said could turn work into a divine offering. Zookeeping is dirty, repetitive, and poorly paid. And yet people volunteer for years, move across the country, and accept major sacrifices in their personal lives to be able to do it.

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In interviews with zookeepers, Bunderson and Thompson found that their feelings about their work ran much deeper than a standard survey metric like job satisfaction could capture. Again and again, they used phrases like “I knew this is what I was meant to do” and described a pull toward work with animals starting in early childhood. The sense of calling also came with a feeling of moral obligation. Zookeepers described an intense dedication to the animals they worked with, and to the zoos’ mission of promoting conservation and breeding endangered species.
Nemes takes pride in the breeding programs that Capron Park, and most US zoos, are part of. She tells me about the black-footed ferret, which was saved from extinction thorough captive breeding and has been reintroduced in the wild. “That’s amazing,” she says. “Extinct is forever.”

Livia Gershon writing for JSTOR Daily about zookeepers, and the broader question of what makes work meaningful.

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Werner Herzog Walks to Paris

Werner Herzog | Of Walking in Ice | University of Minnesota Press | April 2015 | 12 minutes (3,048 words)

 

Long out of print, then in print in only a difficult-to-find small press edition, Herzog’s brilliant, strange jewel of travel writing has been reissued this spring. It is excerpted here courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press in the U.S. and Vintage in the U.K.

* * *

At the end of November 1974, a friend from Paris called and told me that Lotte Eisner was seriously ill and would probably die. I said that this must not be, not at this time, German cinema could not do without her now, we would not permit her death. I took a jacket, a compass, and a duffel bag with the necessities. My boots were so solid and new that I had confidence in them. I set off on the most direct route to Paris, in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot. Besides, I wanted to be alone with myself. What I wrote along the way was not intended for readers. Now, four years later, upon looking at the little notebook once again, I have been strangely touched, and the desire to show this text to others unknown to me outweighs the dread, the timidity to open the door so wide for unfamiliar eyes. Only a few private remarks have been omitted. Read more…

Casualties of Conservation

Longreads Pick

Tanzania’s ecotourism industry may be saving the country’s animals, but it’s threatening indigenous peoples.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: May 10, 2015
Length: 38 minutes (9,710 words)

Graves of the Dead

Photo via Flickr

Ken Otterbourg | The New New South | April 2015 | 10 minutes (2,439 words)

 

 

After starting in Pittsburgh, the Ohio River heads north and then quickly loops south, as if realizing the error in its ways. It is a place to get lost and to get found. The river bends and twists here with energy, like a snake caught by its tail. There is an optimism in the current, movement and ambition, married with the skeletons of our built world and those worlds that came before that rise out of the fields and hills along the banks. Sometimes in the grace of dawn these structures appear as nearly flesh and blood. But that hope recedes as the sun climbs over the hill, past the chestnuts and maples. Time and gravity wait to do their parts. Read more…

The Origins of Lilly Pulitzer

[Lilly Pulitzer] Rousseau’s story has been oft-told over the years: Born the middle of three daughters into a socially prominent family in Roslyn, New York, Lilly McKim attended all the right schools (Chapin, Miss Porter’s) with all the right people (Jacqueline Bouvier was a schoolmate at Miss Porter’s) before eloping in 1952, at age 21, with newspaper scion Peter Pulitzer. The pair moved to Palm Beach, where Pulitzer operated a successful citrus grove business, and his bride quickly had three children: Peter Jr., Liza and Minnie. The couple threw fabulous parties, famously tossing water on the tiled kitchen floor of their great big house overlooking Lake Worth so that everyone could do the twist after dinner. Lilly herself became known for “not giving a whit,” according to her longtime friend Susannah Cutts, accruing a menagerie of dogs, cats, monkeys and even a calf (“those awful animals,” Rousseau says now). But then, in 1958, Lilly’s sunniness began to fade. “I had terrible anxiety attacks,” she says, “so I went to the nuthouse.” The nuthouse was a psychiatric hospital in Westchester County, New York—“I can’t really remember how long I was there, but my cousin was there too, so that was nice”—and she returned home armed with but one piece of medical advice: Get a hobby.

“Peter said, ‘Well, why don’t you sell my oranges?’” recalls Rousseau, who promptly started pulling her station wagon up her tony neighbors’ driveways, delivering fruit. The stand quickly followed, though Lilly discovered her crisp white shirts and shorts were becoming ruined with juice stains. “So I went to the five-and-dime, bought some fabric, took it to the seamstress, and she did it up,” Rousseau says, noting that she wanted dresses that were “colorful and cotton and cool,” with slits up the sides for bending over. She even hung a few up in the stand, selling them for $22.50 a piece.

The town went wild. “I couldn’t keep up with all the orders!” she marvels. Soon Lilly was flying regularly to Key West, where she created the prints along with a “gay as your hat” designing couple who ran a textile business called Key West Fabrics.

Sarah Haight profiling designer and Palm Beach doyenne Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau in the December 2008 issue of W Magazine. Pulitzer Rousseau died in 2013.

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See Also: “Palm Beach’s Barefoot Princess” (Laura Jacobs, Vanity Fair, 2003)

The Dolphin Trainer Who Loved Dolphins Too Much

Longreads Pick

Dolphin trainer Ashley Guidry loved her job and the animals she worked with—in particular, a dolphin calf named Chopper. But years of seeing how business was done behind the scenes at a small marine park made her come to the painful conclusion that she had to walk away from it all.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 15, 2015
Length: 24 minutes (6,193 words)

The Dolphin Trainer Who Loved Dolphins Too Much

Ashley Guidry with Sandy, a wild-caught bottlenose dolphin, at Gulf World.

Tim Zimmermann | Longreads | April 2015 | 25 minutes (6,193 words)

 

Panama City Beach, Florida is set on the alluring waters of the Gulf Of Mexico, in northwestern Florida. It’s a town of cookie-cutter condos and sprawling outlet malls, built almost entirely on the idea that blazing sun, a cool sea, white sand beaches, and copious amounts of booze are an irresistible formula for human happiness (or at least a pretty damn good time). Everything about the place—from the ubiquitous fast food, to the endless chain stores, to the Brobdingnagian miniature golf courses—is designed to anticipate and then slake the vast and relentless array of human desires.

Prime among the entertainment offerings is Gulf World Marine Park. It sits on Front Beach Road, the main drag that parallels the seafront, and promises sun-addled or bored families a respite from the nearby beach. By day you can swim with dolphins (“guaranteed”) or watch them perform the standard flips and tricks in a show pool, check out the sharks and stingrays, or watch the sea lions act goofy. By night you can watch “Illusionist Of The Year” (it’s not clear who made the designation) Noah Wells unleash his “Maximum Magic.” “It’s Always Showtime At Gulf World” says the marketing department. And that’s true: The entire place shuts down for only two days a year (Thanksgiving and Christmas).

Gulf World is not SeaWorld; it’s much smaller, less expensive, (though a family of four will still fork over $96 just to get past the gate), and there are no killer whales. But it is more typical of the 32 marine parks that keep dolphins and do business in the United States, and it’s these local parks which happen to house the vast majority of the captive dolphins (according to Ceta-Base, which tracks marine parks, there are currently some 509 dolphins at marine parks in the U.S.; about 144 are located at SeaWorld). If SeaWorld is the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey when it comes to marine mammal entertainment, Gulf World is one of the many small, local carnivals that do a pretty decent trade out of the limelight. And Gulf World happens to be where Ashley Guidry—a brassy blonde with minimal experience, and a simple application accompanied by a Polaroid—happened to land a job in April 2001, at the age of 27. Read more…

The Answer Is Never

Illustration by Devon Kelley-Yurdin

Sabine Heinlein | Longreads | April 2015 | 16 minutes (3,886 words)

 

One time, when I was in my early twenties, I shared a hospital room with a mother of many. I had a skin infection that wouldn’t respond to oral medication, and the 50-something-year-old woman had severe, inexplicable hives. Our main topic of conversation revolved around neither of our ailments. It was about my not wanting to have children. She was insistent, which seemed ironic considering her hives flared up whenever her family visited her on Sundays. I eventually compromised with the woman. Okay, I said, I will put off my decision until I reach my thirties. “You are starry-eyed,” she huffed. “You young women want it all. But you can’t have it all!” Maybe, I thought, some of us don’t want it all. Read more…

Interview with a Torturer

S-21. Photo by lecercle

Rithy Panh with Christophe Bataille | Translated by John Cullen | The Elimination: A survivor of the Khmer Rouge confronts his past and the commandant of the killing fields | Other Press | February 2013 | 44 minutes (12,355 words)

Below is an excerpt from the book The Elimination, by Rithy Panh, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky. Read more…