Here in Windsor, and soon across most of Ontario, we find ourselves in the grip of a 4-week lockdown. I find it useful to think back to the initial constraints imposed as the pandemic spread in early 2020 and governments responded. Reeling from the enormity of that first lockdown in mid-March, including the abrupt move … Continue reading Coronavirus 10: close encounters of the bird kind
Tag: Environment
Coronavirus 2
Following up from my last post, the American Association of Geographers has now cancelled its annual meeting in Denver, scheduled for April 6-10. This was the right call, and over 60 percent of respondents to the AAG's one-question survey a few days ago survey said they were cancelling or discouraged from attending. Now across the … Continue reading Coronavirus 2
Coronavirus
I received word a couple days ago that the American Association of Geographers (AAG) is proceeding with its annual meeting in Denver in April, unlike many groups and companies that have spent the last week cancelling events because of the threat of coronavirus. The American Physical Union (APU) was set to host its annual conference … Continue reading Coronavirus
Two years and some links
I have now been doing this blog, with an increasingly haphazard publication schedule, for two years. The pace of writing has slowed considerably as I have taken on more administrative duties in my department, where I am now undergraduate program chair and the principal academic advisor, tried to buckle down and refocus some effort on … Continue reading Two years and some links
Ecological dystopia
On October 8, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report detailing the urgent need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit anthropogenic global warming to 1.5ºC, with immediate and dramatic action necessary by 2030. You would never know this from the report's official title, which straddles the line between the nomenclature … Continue reading Ecological dystopia
Outer Banks and then some
I recently had a chance to travel to the Outer Banks, a string of barrier islands along the coast of North Carolina. There was an elemental feeling to standing on the beach at Nags Head with the waves crashing against the breakwater just a few yards away, the sea foam rushing around my calves as … Continue reading Outer Banks and then some
Early April snippets
I am currently sitting in the Detroit airport, on my way to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), where I will be presenting a paper on collective bargaining and institutional culture in the Canadian foreign service, co-written with a former research assistant. It has been a hectic few … Continue reading Early April snippets
The coal miner’s helmet
This is a brief post, picking up on a theme I discussed a few posts ago and which is increasingly at the center of my research focus, though in a slightly different way in this example. I have been doing, as I've noted, research on the embodied knowledge of labor and workers in the workplace, … Continue reading The coal miner’s helmet
Flint, Michigan
It has been three years since the city of Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water to the Flint River. With the political decision to put no corrosion control in place with the new source, the river water corroded the city's aging infrastructure of water mains and residential delivery pipes, releasing years of lead … Continue reading Flint, Michigan
Fukushima, Japan
Nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are much in the news lately as tensions in the Korean peninsula have risen, with aggressive talk from both US President Donald Trump and further attempts by North Korea to develop a long-range missile system to deliver nuclear warheads. Personally, I have been dismayed and shocked by … Continue reading Fukushima, Japan
