| EntryNo: |
34 |
| Date: |
Wednesday
10:28
02.22.2006 |
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Keeya Osawa |
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Location: Boulder, CO.
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Came upon your site when looking for more info on you and your writings.
Am re-reading 'American Desert'....Must say that I had a bad encounter with that group, Tonanztin, in regards to the uranium mining issues on the Grand Canyon rim and the Havasupai. They took it upon themselves to be THE ones and only ones for that to be.."Their issue"..meaning Tonanztin. Macho gang and wondered if intentions were sincere. Am thankful that the mining company...Energy Fuels Nuclear..halted new mining (due to money problems,the realization that there was a glut in the market and prices had fallen drastically..there are still uranium mines there...rediculous and insane)...because the court case was lost...crap Pheonix lawyer, Tonantzin and the lacks of the then Tribal Council.
The chapter on Sedona was fun...I lived there..actually outside of city limits...I like to make that point clear...
 but knew that 'Indian'... guy who took you out to Boynton.. who tried to get me to carry on those "ceremonies" with him..to, "make it look more authentic"  ....beautiful place..and breaks my heart to see it turn into another southwest Beverly Hills. The spelling of the place by the "Y" is incorrect..in the book it is spelled as it sounds..sort of...Tlaquepaque/correct spelling...maybe this was corrected if the book was reprinted?
The Sedona and Verde Valley area is a place that needs protection as well..incredibly the whole area is understudied or not at all as far as natural history and those who lived there before any intrusions... but perhaps like here in CO., sprawl, overconsumption, the greed $$$$$ rules.  Thanks for this site and forum and look forward to reading your other work!
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| EntryNo: |
33 |
| Date: |
Thursday
08:33
02.16.2006 |
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Rick DeFlorio |
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Location: Valparaiso, Indiana
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I was wondering, where is Alex Shoumatoff? I treasured his "Florida Ramble"(that must seem like ancient history)so I googled him. You've been busy, and then some. I think it's time to read his "other"stuff". Your throwing chance to the wind is my style on an admitted smaller scale. Well time to research what to read next.
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| EntryNo: |
32 |
| Date: |
Wednesday
09:43
02.15.2006 |
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Ana Goreti G. dos Santos |
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Location: Carmel NY
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Dear Mr. Shoumatoff,
I am so glad I had a change to check your work. Your work on Brazil is wonderful. O Brazil é maravilhoso!
Obrigada
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| EntryNo: |
31 |
| Date: |
Friday
10:12
02.03.2006 |
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Michael Ross |
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Location: London
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What do we know of Henry Walter Bates (1825-1892), and how do we know it? Well, with the really front-rank scientists we are almost overwhelmed with information. For example, there are over 50 biographies of Darwin, and somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand letters to and from him still survive.
With Bates, who of all European biologists except Muller spent the longest time in Amazonia, we know little and have few sources. Hence it's important to know what these sources are.
First of all, his famous book. You have to know that most editions of this book are abridged, and that the abridged editions have much of the biological information cut out. The two-volume 1863 first edition was abridged almost immediately so that Murray could bring out a cheaper one-volume edition in 1864. To achieve this Bates cut out about one sixth of the first edition.
It is this abridged edition which is usually reprinted. As an example, I possess a modern paperback by Narrative Press, 2002, which is abridged and lacks illustrations and map but does include a reprint of Darwin's review of the original. Well produced, with good legible type, this is quite suitable for an initial read-through.
However, the serious tropical biology fan undoubtedly needs to graduate to the original edition. Your choice is either the rare books dungeon at your local university, or to buy one of the few reprints of the first edition.
In my case I bought a copy of Murray's 1892 reprint, produced soon after Bates' death. The description goes as follows:
The naturalist on the river Amazons, with a memoir of the author by Edward Clodd, lxxix+[iii]+395p+photo frontis+coloured plate+folding map+42 wood-engraved illustrations.
This is not only a reprint of the first edition together with illustrations, but includes Clodd's 89-page biography, which is one of the primary sources for Bates' life. I don't think any modern reprint has provided as much in one volume; you can bet if a publisher does not explicitly say 'reprint of the unabridged first edition' what you get will be the abridged version.
Modern biographies of Bates are few; I have two:
Woodcock G. Henry Walter Bates, naturalist of the Amazons. Faber 1969.
Woodcock was a writer of travel books who gave a good account of Bates' early life, but a weak account of the biology and is too dismissive of Bates' later life.
Moon H.P. Henry Walter Bates FRS 1825-1892, explorer, scientist and darwinian. Leicester Museums 1976.
This is an excellent pamphlet by a zoologist who does justice to the science, and gives a list of a few other sources for the Bates fan to search out. Here's an example from Moon's preface:
"The naturalist on the river Amazons is one of the really great books on scientific exploration, but its reputation has suffered from the abridged second edition of 1864. This is the version usually available and was reprinted by John Murray in any number of succeeding editions."
Finally, I would suggest the two or three of the most important of Bates' entomology papers (refs in Clodd and Moon). Then the real quality of his contributions to natural history and to evolutinary biology is thrown into relief, and you will see why Darwin and Wallace thought so much of him.
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| EntryNo: |
30 |
| Date: |
Monday
09:09
10.10.2005 |
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Eric Gagnon |
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Location: Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
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Congratulations - I discovered your site through Craig Lapp's slideshow on Congo. Took much pleasure reading your Report on the Wildlife of Eastern Congo. You are always welcome, if you need a place to stay in Goma. Remind me to talk to you about the Rupert's River in Northern Quebec, in Cree Eeyou Istchee land. An awesome river is about to disappear up there, because of unnecessary big hydro.
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| EntryNo: |
29 |
| Date: |
Monday
01:37
10.10.2005 |
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Caroline Audet |
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Location: Ottawa, Ontario
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Thank you Alex for the Dispatches, brought back fond memories of Dungu, although the present description of the situation out there wasn't quite like that in 1979-81 but I guess the revolutions did cause quite some destruction. Hopefully in a near future you'll be able to comment on how beautiful it is again, and the pleasures of cruising the Garamba State Park.
Caroline Audet, Ottawa, Canada
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| EntryNo: |
28 |
| Date: |
Thursday
11:57
09.01.2005 |
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Michael Ross |
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Location: London
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First off, you mentioned an interest in finding a poem by Alfred Russel Wallace. I reckon you might mean 'A description of Javita' which occurs in Wallace's 'A narrative on travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro with an account of the natives tribes &c &c' [Wallace titles were always so long they are rarely quoted in full]
Indolence precludes my typing it out here (it runs on for several pages) but I'd be happy to post you a p/copy if you have put an address somewhere on this site [else e-mail it to me please]
Second, you'll remember that I said your list of 19thC traveller-naturalists was short of some important names. I'll deal with JD Hooker another time; here I just want to blow the trumpet for Fritz Muller [+umlaut] who was one of the few European naturalists to stay in Amazonia for the rest of his life.
A biography of Muller is in print: West DA 2003. Fritz Muller: a naturalist in Brazil. Pocahontas Press, Blacksburg Va.
His two big contributions to biology are 1) mimicry of one noxious species by another, based on his observations on Amazonian butterflies. This tendency for noxious species to come to share similar warning colouration is now called Mullerian mimicry. See Jim Mallet's website if you want to know more; this kind of mimicry is still a live research topic.
2) his one book-length publication was 'Facts for Darwin' in which he collected examples supporting evolution by natural selection.
It cannot, I think, be an accident that Darwin's chief supporters in the matter of natural selection were field naturalists such as Wallace, Muller, Bates, Hooker, Asa Gray and Huxley (all of whom studied nature on land and/or at sea) whereas his main opponents (such as Owen) lacked that background.
Well, that's all for now!
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| EntryNo: |
27 |
| Date: |
Tuesday
01:30
08.30.2005 |
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Bill Mueller |
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Location: Milwaukee, WI
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Thanks, Alex, for your years of good work, and esp. for the recent Audubon article on Camille Parmesan. I'm going to try to get lots of folks I know to read it, as well as the "Dispatches..." site! Please keep fighting this good fight!!!
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| EntryNo: |
26 |
| Date: |
Sunday
08:18
06.12.2005 |
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Roseann Hanson |
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Found dispatches searching for something entirely unrelated online - so happy to have found what happened to Alex. Lost touch for the last 6 years. Used to love to read your work in Outside, before they started putting naked babes on the covers and hiring editors whose knowledge of world geography is based on existence of extreme sports venues (we know because we're also refugees from the weird sad world of magazine writing - Outside among them; something about turning 40 and 50 respectively and the editors wanting hipper and hipper language in shorter and shorter pieces.....).
Anyway, glad to find you. will check in once in a while - do you have a mailing list?
Roseann & Jonathan Hanson
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| EntryNo: |
25 |
| Date: |
Saturday
07:19
06.11.2005 |
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Andre Shoumatoff - ADMINISTRATOR |
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Location: Park City, Utah, USA
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*****After a long hyatus this new guestbook has been added and is now functional again now in June, 2005. Feel free to post up and sorry to the time that it was down!******
Andre Shoumatoff
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