University of California Press Blog

An Eyewitness to Climate Change

Starting on December 7, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. With the Copenhagen summit on the horizon, "Climate Change and Our World", an exhibit of Gary Braasch's striking photographs, opened November 18 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. (exhibit pictured above). Braasch, an environmental photographer and author of Earth Under Fire, has documented global warming since 1999 as part of his "World View of Global Warming" project, and his work is powerful visual testimony to global warming's devastating effects and the need for a solution.

The exhibit features large-scale color photographs from Earth Under Fire, revealing the creatures and landscapes that are threatened by global warming, and show the damage that has already been done. A coral reef transforms from a vibrant underwater world into stubble on the ocean floor. A once-bustling penguin nesting ground near Antarctica (left) dwindles in population. Glaciers recede and vanish (the Antarctic ice cave pictured above melted soon after the photo was taken), and drought strikes some areas, where elsewhere, waterlines rise and flooding encroaches upon cities and towns.

Braasch's work illustrates the causes and consequences of global warming, but also visions of progress, like solar panels and Iceland's use of geothermal energy to power Reykjavik. We can choose a cooler world, he says in Earth Under Fire, but international cooperation is essential.

The AAAS exhibit runs until March 15. For more photos and exhibit information, visit Gary Braasch's Earth Under Fire website or the AAAS site. View more of Braasch's work at Braaschphotography.com.

Richard O. Moore at Lunch Poems, December 3

Poet and UC Press author Richard O. Moore will read from his forthcoming collection, Writing the Silences, at noon this Thursday, December 3, as part of the Lunch Poems Noontime Poetry Reading Series at UC Berkeley's Morrison Library.

Richard Moore belonged to the San Francisco Renaissance literary circle of Kenneth Rexroth in the 1940s and 1950s, which was a precursor to the Beat poetry movement. In 1949 he was one of the founders of KPFA, the first listener-supported public radio station in the United States, and he has made many documentary films that have showed on public television and elsewhere. Brenda Hillman, poet and co-editor of Writing the Silences and of the New California Poetry series, will introduce Moore's reading.

When and where:

Thursday, December 3, 2009
12:10 - 12:50 pm
Morrison Library (101 Doe Library)
UC Berkeley Campus (Campus map)
Admission is free and open to the public

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Harryette Mullen, Amiri Baraka, and Lyn Hejinian are among the other UC Press poets who have read their work at Lunch Poems. Watch their readings at UCTV.

Lunch Poems is directed by Robert Hass, co-editor of the UC Press New California Poetry Series. In this UCTV video, Hass introduces a Lunch Poems reading by Robin Blaser, author of The Holy Forest and The Fire.

Keith Waldrop Readings

Keith Waldrop was featured on the PBS Online NewsHour's Art Beat blog this week. As part of Art Beat's Weekly Poems series, Waldrop reads "Soft Hail" and "Plurality of Worlds", both from his book Transcendental Studies, which won the 2009 National Book Award in Poetry.

The National Book Foundation said of Waldrop: "If transcendental immanence were possible, it would be because Keith Waldrop had invented it; he’s the only one who could—and in Transcendental Studies he has. These three linked series achieve a fusion arcing from the Romantic to the Postmodern that demonstrates language’s capacity to go to extremes—and to haul daily lived experience right along with it: life imitates language, and when language becomes these poems, life itself gets more various, more volatile, more vital".

Listen to Keith Waldrop read from his first book, "A Windmill Near Calvary", (shortlisted for the 1968 National Book Award), and other works, in this Art International Radio/PennSound "Close Listening" reading.

Excerpt from "Shipwreck in Haven", from Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies:

Shipwreck in Haven

I can't swim at all, and it is dangerous to converse with an unaccustomed Element.
ERASMUS

ONE

I

Balancing. Austere. Life-
less. I have tried to keep
context from claiming you.

Without doors. And there are
windows. How far, how
far into the desert have we come?

Rude instruments, product
of my garden. Might also be
different, what I am thinking of.

So you see: it is
not  symmetrical, dark
red out of the snow.

2

Enemies for therapy, the
rind of the lime tree
in elaborate garlands.

Strew the tatble. Let the hall
be garlanded and lit, the will
to break away. Welcome your couches.

Witness these details. Your judgment, my
inclination. Hear. Touch. Taste.
Translate. Fixed: the river.

Disquieting thought, I am not
ultimate, full moon, memory.
Prepare for rout.

3

Here, even, in the
sand. Among the rocks, I have
heard, remnant of a cloud.

Unfleshed, short, thin, pointed.
Independent of you, a
revelation. A great city.

Flatly unknown, you do not
know of yourself, do not know
yourself, not stuck full of nails.

Under such illumination, darkness
becomes terror. Under this high
wall, dark ground.

4

High marble wall, broken mid-
way. Dark unphenomenality, like
the hand of a clock. Sun baked.

No direct communication likely. Marble
terrace. Suffusing with soft-
tinted glow. Images first.

The gods and you come later, a wealth
of approaches. Within the portico:
marble. Bundled like qualities.

Not—the world—one of
several, as if it could be
different. Nothing. Nothing different.

5

I mean translated, though some
charms are predetermined. Shall I
not delve and deliver?

If I could think it. Our
wings are broken. As easily might
plunge. In a violent sweat.

The desert. And might be
the same: lemurs
swim down gutters.

And might be the threshold, never
hesitate, ship on the high sea.
The desert in the house.

6

Intrinsic, your un-
thinkability. Casts all over created
things annihilating shadow.

An opening for possible
storms, as a deity enters
the world, a stranger.

The bed we are not in: can-
not surprise it. What passes
in the street? Pure picture.

In the world these
limits, almost occult—only signals
corporeal. To think of something.

7

I was hardly dead, when you
called. Now are you convinced?
Infinitely soft strum.

As if night. As if im-
perceptibly. Slowly, you fall. Break
somewhat the blackness of the day.

Might also be any
direction, every start
takes us to another time.

Forth across the sands. From
sky or from the liver,
divined. Endless beginning.

8

Need not end. Indeed, nothing.  Step
out. Grist for wits. Shadow of your
shell. Stand there.

No other ground. No
other. And the world concerns you every-
where, but do not identify with it.

Let light onto us. Flowers through the
gate, flowers skimming
the wall. A carpet of petal.

Treasures below the earth. Neither in
this world nor another, guarding.
Nothing but fade and flourish.

9

Now there is a door and whoever
very beautiful and very
very strange. Near you a table.

Laughing. Singing. Calling to one
another, the crack of whips. Cloud to
cloud in ricochet.

Music of hooves and wheels. The heavenly
Jerusalem from shards of Babylon
destroyed. Now a door.

Where thinking ends, house and temple
echo, possible objects of
admiration. Will you go?

10

Oh yes and wheels on the pavement,
angels of incidence, rebounding from
waves, but precisely. Reflective angels.

Like the hand of a clock which. minute
by minute, crosses its appointed
spaces. Oh! You are passing!

Things are ready. All
things, because something
must be settled. Slung.

Answering laughter. Mixture of
diamond and diamond
and blood, a rope of flowers.

—Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies

Darwin and the Story of Life

On November 24, 1859, John Murray published Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". That same day, the first printing of 1,250 copies sold out, and it is still in print 150 years later. In the book Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, with natural selection as the mechanism. It was one of the most influential books of the past 200 years, marking a dramatic shift in science, and a new view of life on earth.

Evolution is rooted in science, but is also the story of the connection shared by all life forms, going back to the first elements of the universe, says Scott Sampson, author of Dinosaur Odyssey. He finds that this story is at the heart of Darwin's work, and is essential for a sustainable future. "Arguably Darwin’s greatest contribution was revealing the Great Story, offering up an astounding, evidence-based origin myth that encompasses not only all human cultures, but all life on Earth", he says. On his blog, The Whirlpool of Life, he argues for a new worldview—one that tells this story of our deep immersion in nature and inspires a sense of wonder about life.

In Darwin's Universe, Richard Milner notes that On the Origin of Species was exciting for its scientific significance, but also for the dramatic story it told: "Through Darwin's eyes we no longer see just a sparrow or a cactus, but a roiling drama of conflict and competition, a dynamic landscape of organic beings caught in a relentless struggle for existence."

The theme of origins is central to both science and spirituality, and since Darwin's time, there has been controversy about evolution and creationism as ways of understanding life on earth. In their book More than Darwin, Randy Moore and Mark Decker explore the evolution vs. creationism controversy with portraits of all the major figures on both sides.

On the Origin of Species challenged the existing paradigm, and marked the beginning of a new era in science. Over the past 150 years, the theory of evolution has changed, as Peter Bowler chronicles in the 25th anniversary edition of Evolution: The History of an Idea. It will continue to change as we keep working to unravel the mystery of our origins, and try to trace the story of life back to the beginning. 

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."—Charles Darwin, the final paragraph of On the Origin of Species

Darwin and the Evolution of a Theory, an exhibit of rare books by Darwin and his contemporaries, is on display at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, weekdays until December 22.  

In Memoriam: Bryan Reardon

It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the passing of UC Press author, Professor Emeritus of Classics at University of California, Irvine, and revered scholar, Bryan P. Reardon.

Professor Reardon was first brought to UC Press by our esteemed Director Emeritus, August Fruge, who championed Reardon's work on establishing the novel as an ancient Greek literary form. Reardon translated scores of Greek novels that has been forgotten since the Renaissance, and introduced these tales of romance and adventure to modern readers. His work shaped both perceptions of antiquity and contemporary pop cultural studies.

ICAN, the International Conference of the Ancient Novel, started in part by Reardon, continues to meet every few years. The UC Press staff was honored to work with Professor Reardon on an updated edition of his magnum opus, Collected Ancient Greek Novels for the 2008 conference in Lisbon. The book included a new foreword by J.R. Morgan, an intellectual successor and colleague whom Professor Reardon had the utmost praise for.

We at UC Press will miss the Professor Reardon's delightful transcontinental phone calls, his gentility, and his commitment to impeccable scholarship. He was an inspiration.

California Natural History Survey

Calling all outdoor enthusiasts: University of California Press is conducting a survey. Your anonymous responses will enable University of California Press to advance its offerings for those interested in the natural features of California.

The survey should take about 15 minutes.

Go to the survey

Thanks for your participation!

The Helpful World of Insects

Many people dismiss insects as pests, but without them, as entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer puts it, "life as we know it would be impossible, and human beings would probably become extinct." Waldbauer was interviewed on Saturday on Sierra Club Radio about his book Fireflies, Honey, and Silk, in which he reveals the vital and surprising ways that insects enrich our lives. Listen to the Sierra Club interview (Waldbauer is the last guest).

Waldbauer recalls how his fate as an entomologist was sealed when he discovered a cocoon in an apple tree, took it home, and watched "the most beautiful and amazing insect I had ever seen" emerge. This spectacular creature turned out to be a cecropia moth (left), and Waldbauer still has this same wonder and reverence for insects. Silk, of course, comes from silkworms, but you may be surprised to know that the cocoon of a single silkworm unwinds into 1200-1600 yards of silk fiber, and that silkworms helped Louis Pasteur show that bacteria caused disease. And honeybees make honey, but they are not the only ones—stingless bees and some kinds of ants and wasps do, too. You can thank the fruit fly Drosophilia for its role in the study of genetics, the cochineal insect for the rich red dye developed by the Aztecs, bees for wax candles, and and gall wasps for creating the galls used to make ink. Waldbauer reveals how bugs of all kinds have been friendly and useful companions to us, contributing to fashion, medicine, communication, and our very survival.

Moth photo: Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia) by Marvin Smith, Wikimedia Commons, available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license

Crack the Code to Win the Grand Prize!

It's your last chance to crack the code and win the Book of Codes Sweepstakes! Today we'll give away a copy of The Book of Codes, and the Grand Prize—$100 worth of UC Press books.

Decipher the mystery message in this video and send us a direct message on Twitter (@ucpress) with the answer. If you're right, you could win The Book of Codes and learn how to decode everything from cuneiform and medieval ciphers to the pattern in your living room carpet.

For a chance at the Grand Prize, combine the messages in the week's videos to make a quote by a famous author. Send the correct quote and author to entries@ucpress.edu, and you could win $100 worth of books from UC Press. Put it towards your purchase of the Codex Mendoza, go on a holiday book shopping spree, or save it for a rainy day.

The deadline for both prizes is midnight EST, 9PM PST tonight. Good luck...

Review the week's coded videos:

Monday, The Caesar Shift

Tuesday, International Maritime Code

Wednesday, ASCII

Thursday, Hobo Chalk Marks

Read the Sweepstakes Rules (PDF)