Written Stuff

In the next week or so I hope to post some recent stuff I have written: my trip across the Amazon and the devestating impacts of cattle ranching  and soy production that I saw (and to clear up some misinformation out there about soy production here); GIS and partiality in Landscape Analysis (more for people interested in epistemology); Buddhist ontology and the problem of intrinsic value in Buddhist Environmental Ethics; and potential conflicts between cultural preservation and sustainability in Porto Velho. So, check back!

Place. Culture. Ethics. Design.

So this is opening blog day and I am still trying to discover exactly what this is about. A frog has found its way underneath my door again and is staring at me in the darkness of an Amazonian dawn, afraid to move. Or maybe he is just sleeping; something I should be doing. I was woken up again at 4 in the morning by the neighbor’s dogs that live just outside my door. One of them who just had a litter of five only three months ago is back in attack mode because she just delivered three more yesterday. The slightest sound makes her anxious, she begins barking and then manages to pass her anxiety to me. I moved to the Brazilian Amazon, the city of Porto Velho, nine months ago and will be leaving here in just one more month to live back in the United States, for school. I can say that I know Brazil fairly well. I have lived in Brasilia as well, and have traveled to places like Belem, São Luis, Salvador and some other small cities in Bahia, Rio, São Paulo, Vitoria, Pirinopolis, and Chapada Diamantina. I recently drove across the country on my way to Porto Velho, which brought me to places like Rio Verde and Cuiabá. I love this country and though there are a few things that I will not miss about my home in PV – such as tick bites and other mysterious swollen appendages from small venomous insects and a city, despite being in the Amazon, without trees – I will be moving back, atleast to Brazil. My wife, who is Brazilian, says that she can spot a Brazilian just by their eyes. I didn’t believe her at first, but now I can see it too: a gentleness, love of life, fluid optimism, and openness that gets emitted – something I wish I could, but find too hard, to make my own. In the end, it is what will bring me back here.

So, the blog. I am a landscape Architect more by degree than by practice, and enrolled in post-graduate studies at the University of Brasilia in the Ecological Rehabilitation of Urban Environments. This may sound like an oxymoron to anyone not familiar with the area, but rather than get into that here, I want to make the point that I have been writing a bit on the subject, from various perspectives in philosophy and felt like it would be worth the time to post some of my thoughts here. Further, I am returning to the United States to begin my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. My areas of study are all related to anthropogenic landscapes. I have always had tremendous interest in environmental ethics, the built environment and how our attitudes and values impact non-humans. As I prepare to leave the Amazon and head back to the United States I don’t want this time to be forgotten. I thought I would take the opportunity to post some of what will be written over the next few years, and while I am at it share some of my other creative interests as well, which you will find under my page links.

This blog I imagine falls somewhere loosely within ideas of place, culture, ethics and design, and being such means that I am pretty much open to write and post about anything. I am a little all over the place – and always have been – so just stick with me and I am sure it will all make sense.