Peeks, Pokes, and Pointers!

Water, Mirror, Echo, by Jeff Chang. I’m only partway through this book, but I can already tell that it’s an important read—for me personally, but also just in general. I was a student of Jesse Glover’s for around 14 years, and I knew before I met him that he’d been an early student of Bruce Lee’s. At the time I didn’t fully understand how significant that was; I’d never even seen Enter the Dragon, let alone been cognizant of Lee’s importance to martial arts in America. That his very first American student was a Black man was also something I didn’t appreciate until later. Jesse himself was fairly laconic about it unless you caught him in the right mood, with the result that Chang’s account of their meeting—a chapter I just read—is the fullest version of the story I’ve yet received. Beyond that, so far Chang’s work deserves the accolades it’s receiving; Water, Mirror, Echo is both detailed and nuanced, and situates Lee’s life and legend in a broader context of Asian American history, identity, and experience.

The Structure of Heaven and Earth: How Ancient Cosmology Shaped Everyone’s Theology, among other things, helps answer questions I’ve had for awhile about similarities I’ve noticed between the Catholic Christianity of my youth and the Hellenic polytheism I currently practice. As with so much else, much of it is due to Plato.

Eli Francovich’s commentary on a new critique of wolves’ impact on Yellowstone ecosystems is worth a read. I’d been hearing for awhile that these research findings, published in 2014 to a great deal of attention and acclaim, had been somewhat overstated—which isn’t to say that the return of wolves to Yellowstone has had no effect at all. But ecosystems are complex, as are the effects of changes in species presence and prevalence. Francovich also notes that wolves in Washington are a different matter than wolves in Yellowstone, as the wolves here live much closer to human habitation and use of the landscape. This is important because it’s directly connected to why wolves are controversial here.

This chapter on Ju/’hoansi master trackers—including #Oma Daqm, who was one of the teachers on my recent trip—collaborating on palaeo-ichnology field research is worth reading for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it describes an approach to tracking that relies less on field guides and measurements (no shade, I rely on those myself) and more on a deeply detailed and holistic understanding of one’s environment that enables a reading of tracks as easily as one might read letters. I used to wonder if some of the feats attributed to trackers in Westerns and fantasy fiction had any basis in reality. The reality is often even more impressive.

I initially had kind of mixed feelings about this trailer. On the one hand, yet another story about a white guy looking for something in Africa seems unnecessary. On the other, it’s Wernor Herzog, so it’ll definitely be interesting...and /Ui Dawid, one of the master trackers, I literally just spent a week and a half learning from. So I may have to see this.

(Originally posted at Following Curiosity. You can comment here or there.)