'Unholy Chicago singularity' and 'Metropolis of the West': Contextualizing a joke about Chicago as a nexus of modernity (through Progressive Era print promotions)

(Originally posted elsewhere on 14 August 2025.) Was thinking on this meme-y joke (image attached above) circulating among friends. Maybe Chicago was kinda perceived--or at least marketed--that way from 1875-ish to 1925-ish (speaking very vaguely). That's what the 1893 Columbian Exposition might'

Nostalgia, Indigenous dispossession, colonial forestry, and Paul Bunyan getting slapped: Contextualizing the battle between Ojibwe hero Nanabozho and a US mascot through history of Minnesota extraction and marketing imagery

(Originally posted elsewhere on 12 March 2023.) So this post was circulating among acquaintances online: And I'd recommend checking out an essay by Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand, published at Edge Effects in 2021. Aside from addressing the Ojibwe story about the Nanabozho fighting against logging (including an

Contextualizing intense Australian mining on Aboriginal land of Pilbara (a timeline and critique of a corporate publicity stunt)

(Originally posted elsewhere on 16 November 2020.) Hmm? Interesting "acknowledgement" here from Fortescue, don't you think? Why would such a mining company "welcome a track construction machine featuring Indigenous art at its Eliwana iron ore mine and rail project"? What else has iron-mining

Fishmeal boom (and bust) in Peru and Chile: Ghost acres, global circuits, US-Dutch industry, and an environmental history of the state(s) vs. the Humboldt Current

(Originally posted elsewhere on 18 May 2022.) Two excerpts, in conversation. Both about the boom and bust of fishmeal industry in Chilean/Peruvian ports; the role of the state in “mining the forest/sea”; the global web of agents/investors in postwar “protein production”; and the influence of El Nino

Imperial admins 'bedeviled' by insects in Dutch Indonesia and British India: Telegraphy 'information flows' undermined by 'goth foes of civilization' (termites!) and the specificity of local environmental context

(Originally posted elsewhere in two parts on 19 December 2020 and 7 October 2021.) Rohan Deb Roy’s work on “white ants” as minor (sometimes more-than-minor?) frustrations for “the material foundations of the colonial state” (paper documents, railways, telegraph lines, other wooden structures) has been familiar to me

Contextualizing a joke about the Jiajing Emperor: One million massive timbers brought to the Beijing palace, dragged by 500 laborers per tree, to symbolically connect center of power to the periphery's old-growth forests

(Originally posted elsewhere on 18 April 2023.) If you think that's dramatic of him, you should hear about his palace and attendant timber harvest to service it. -- Excerpt: On the night of April 30, 1541, the Ming Ancestral Temple in Beijing was struck by lightning and burned to

Short riff on circulations of aesthetics/visual culture: Eisenstein, Japan, and Berlin (and what was it like to see a Soviet auteur's naval mutiny film in a Weimar cinema right after the Kiel Mutiny?)

(Originally post elsewhere on 22 January 2026.) Had to--and I’m sorry, I’m really, really exhausted--read Frederik Schodt’s influential (in US pop-history/media criticism circles) 1983 writing on Japanese manga, kind of like an "intro" to contemplate. But I tried treating it instead

'Faking' Niagara Falls and the electrification of 'white womanhood' in Los Angeles, 1930s: 'Colonial spectacle' and electrical power in a modern(ist) nation

(Niagara piece originally analyzed in a post elsewhere on 7 December 2020. Los Angeles piece analyzed in a post elsewhere on 29 December 2021. Synthesized later.) Two pieces from the past year or so—one in Environment and Society Portal’s Arcadia and one in Edge Effects. One on “visual

Slow death and debilitating infrastructures: Jasbir Puar (and Neel) on debt, labor, mobility impairment, and carceral temporality

(Originally posted elsewhere on 23 October 2023.) Just a couple of excerpts in conversation. Puar has a way of putting things. I'll not dilute it with added comments. With a little complimentary framing from geographer Phil Neel. (My commentary/critique is implicit in arranging these passage together! Can

ACTUAL BLACK HILLS POST :)

lol

Vancouver sugar refining, the workers' strikes of 2023, and indentured labor at Fijian plantations in the 1910s: Phantom limbs of British Columbia in a global circuit

(Originally posted summer 2024.) Updates are in order. Two things I was exploring in early 2024: While reading on disability, I found Jane Buckingham's recently published piece: "Disabling labour: race, disability and Indian indentured labor on Fijian sugar plantations, 1879-1920," Postcolonial Studies, vol. 27, no.

Savannification and invasive worms (part 2 of 2): Responding to (many) messages about worms and landscape change!

(Originally posted elsewhere on 4 December 2019.) G U E S S A G A I N Jokes aside, I still rescue earthworms from sidewalks and have since I was a child in our little informal, weird-girl, after-school bug-club, as I’m sure many of us did