When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
Pets were few inside the hidden cities, but many people kept caterpillars, and helped nuture them from worm, to
So many animals, and people, had been lost to the change, that a catepillar represented the chance for emergence from the situation. While the change was happening, some species of caterpillars threatened environments and people when the never ending rains, extended from the period of change to longer seasons, created habitats where the creatures thrived. Some over-thrived.
In Liberia, mass breeding of caterpillars, in an exceptionally wet climate, pushed people out of their own homes. The masses of caterpillars devoured plants and food for other wildlife became scarce. Normally, the caterpillars would not all fully develop, but in the extreme damp conditions the creature's multipled, nearly all growing to full adulthood. It became known as the caterpillar crisis of climate change in Liberia, and consideration was given to spraying the country with chemical pesticides to defeat the munching worms. The threat of poisoning the environment made the authorities decide against any pesticide use, and so the people moved away from the caterpillar infested areas, taking shelter in refugee camps.
While Liberia hated the caterpillars, other parts of the world were marveling at the growth of the species, and the
Many people who lived in the hidden cities remembered the seasons of the butterflies with joy, and desired to keep the Monarch caterpillar as pets in their living areas. These pets were hand-fed leaves and grass, and given safe, dark places to build their chrysalis, and time to allow the transformation. When the caterpillar began to break out of its chrysalis, people gathered to watch the butterfly emerge.
When the birght coloured creature spread its wings and flew into the air, the people clapped at the performance.
Welcome to Haiはい。my transmedia journey,
-Lisa
*Flickr photos by:
Caterpillar - Brenda Anderson: http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouskiwi/
Chrysalis - MsEli: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mseli/
Butterfly - dwain77: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwain77/
Vox friends & readers:
I feel very bittersweet announcing that I'm another person jumping ship: I'm moving Books, the Universe, and Everything over to Wordpress.
My main three reasons for leaving Vox are:
1. The requirement for people to register to leave comments.
2. The inability to control how much of each post gets published in the RSS feed. (I hate that RSS subscribers can't see my full posts.)
3. The lack of formatting and style control.
As long as my Vox friends are still interested, I will be posting links on Vox whenever I have new posts on Wordpress. You can comment on Vox, or on Wordpress - whatever you prefer.
Additionally, if you'd like to stay up to date on my posts, you can subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow Books, the Universe & Everything on Facebook. (Links to new posts will appear in your news feed.)
My new Wordpress blog is located here:
http://www.booksuniverseeverything.com/
I have moved all 407 posts from Vox over to Wordpress - and each post links back to the original post on Vox to read the comments.
And while this definitely isn't goodbye, I just want to take a moment to thank all my Vox neighbors. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and to read your wonderful blogs. I look forward to continuing to read & comment on my Neighborhood page, and will do so as long as there are posts there to read.
I'm excited for Books, the Universe, and Everything's new home, but I'm sad to leave Vox as well. I hope that my neighbors on Vox will continue to follow me at my new location.
Links to my first Wordpress posts:
-October's Polysyllabic Spree
-New Home & Book Giveaway
So, I've been using my Typepad account instead of VOX, and whenever I come back over this way I have shit loads of spam comments to delete. Surely, VOX, if you delete a spam account, it should automatically delete all of the spam comments they've left as well?
Today I celebrate my independence from the British...
Whilst tossing away pretty much everything I own (CDs and DVDs... you're next!) I found a box full of stuff pertaining to that Guy-Who-I-Hope-Chokes-on-an-English-Muffin. Pictures, gifts he'd given me (including a pair of shoes that were not my style), etc. I went through the pictures and laughed as I went along... he really was a goofy dude... but it was sort of surreal, because while I know I dated this guy, it was like looking at someone I never even knew. Even looking at me was weird, because I really don't recognize that person. I pulled out a few pictures that had some other friends in them and tossed the Brit into the trash bag. I found another stack of stuff from the Blood Seller and tossed most of that as well.
Shaniqua came in and said she never would be able to toss pictures. I told her that these people are in my past, and frankly I don't care or think about them any more, so why hold onto these things? To me, they're just taking up space.
Maybe that makes me cold hearted. I don't know. But I do know that hanging onto items from the past has never meant much to me. Whether good or bad, the experiences I had with these people have shaped who I have become now, and really, that's all the reminding I need.
So, goodbye to the Brit, and goodbye to the Bloodseller. You've been cleared out.
I do kind of wonder, though, wherever you are, do you somehow know you've been tossed?
I guess that's a question to which I will never know the answer.
-K.
