Salt marsh resilience compromised by crabs along tidal creek edges

A long-term study in California's Elkhorn Slough revealed the impact of superabundant crabs on salt marsh vegetation and the vulnerability of tidal creek banks to erosion

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA CRUZ

 

IMAGE: THE STRIPED SHORE CRAB (PACHYGRAPSUS CRASSIPES) IS A SMALL CRAB FOUND ALL ALONG THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA, AND IT IS EXTREMELY ABUNDANT IN ELKHORN SLOUGH. view more 

CREDIT: K. BEHESHTI

Coastal marshes are vulnerable to erosion caused by rising seas, pounding waves, and tidal flows. In Elkhorn Slough on the Central Coast of California, these vulnerabilities are made worse by superabundant crabs found at their highest densities along the estuary’s tidal creeks, according to a new study published August 8 in Ecosphere.

The striped shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes) is a small crab found all along the West Coast of North America, and it is extremely abundant in Elkhorn Slough. The study demonstrated the dual role of these crabs as both consumers of salt marsh vegetation and as ecosystem engineers.

“Their burrowing weakens the creekbank edges, so that whole chunks of marsh will sometimes calve off, and by lowering biomass they are reducing the ability of marsh plants to prevent erosion,” said lead author Kathryn Beheshti, who earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz in 2021 and is currently a California Sea Grant State Fellow at the Ocean Protection Council’s Climate Change Program.

Beheshti and her coauthors conducted a five-year field experiment to assess the effects of crabs on the vegetation and sediments along eroding creekbank edges. Using fencing and traps made of empty tennis-ball cans to exclude crabs from experimental enclosures, they found that reducing crab abundance led to increased growth of salt marsh vegetation and enhanced sediment density.

The researchers also found that the number of burrows did not change over the study period, even with researchers experimentally removing crabs. The unexpected persistence of the burrows highlights the value of long-term field experiments. The experiment was maintained for five years thanks in large part to the efforts of a team of over 50 UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students and high school interns.

“Field experiments that span multiple seasons and years are rare,” said coauthor Kerstin Wasson, research coordinator of the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz. “This work demonstrates the value of long-term studies by showing that burrows, which weaken the stability of tidal creek banks, persist despite the near absence of the crabs that build them.”

Coauthor Brent Hughes, assistant professor at Sonoma State University, noted that the crabs were most abundant in spring and summer, when the pickleweed marshes are at peak production. “This synchrony suggests that the effect of crabs as consumers is more punctuated than their more chronic effect as engineers,” he said.

Elkhorn Slough is one of the largest estuaries in California, with the largest tract of tidal salt marsh in the state outside of San Francisco Bay. It has been highly altered by human activities, however, and erosion along the edges of the tidal creeks and main channel is steadily eating away at the marsh.

“It’s a big issue, because when the marsh erodes away along the tidal creeks it’s a permanent loss,” Beheshti said.

The impacts of crabs on marsh biomass and soil structure near tidal creek banks are likely to make the marsh less resilient to erosion and sea-level rise, presenting a unique challenge to managers. Restoring populations of crab predators, such as herons, racoons, and sea otters, may be one way to mitigate these negative effects.

“In this system, top-predator recovery is key,” said coauthor Brian Silliman, distinguished professor at Duke University.

This collaborative study brought together marsh ecologists from both the East and West Coasts who have led the field in exploring how animals affect the marshes they inhabit. Over the past few decades, the U.S. East Coast has been the epicenter of studies exploring top-down effects in salt marshes, and this study is one of the few to explore such effects in a West Coast salt marsh.

“Southeastern U.S. marshes appear to be a harbinger of what’s to come for marshes along the Pacific coast, with sea-level rise amplifying the effects of what would otherwise be considered an innocuous crab,” said coauthor Christine Angelini, associate professor at University of Florida.

The authors called for similar long-term studies to be conducted in other West Coast marsh systems to determine how widespread these crab effects are. “It’d be great for contextualizing our findings,” Beheshti said. “We’d like to know if Elkhorn Slough is the canary in the coal mine, signaling yet another pathway for accelerated marsh edge loss for one of California's rarest coastal habitats.”

This work was supported in part by grants from the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship, the Myers Ocean Trust, and Friends of Long Marine Laboratory.

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JOURNAL

Ecosphere

DOI

10.1002/ecs2.3703

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-term study reveals top-down effect of crabs on a California salt marsh

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

Ross earns NSF CAREER award to study fresh, saltwater mixing in estuaries

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

The way fresh and seawater mix in an estuary influences its water circulation, physics and quality, which affect ecosystems and aquaculture. Scientists understand the dynamics of the process in estuaries with simple topographies, but Lauren Ross seeks to better understand them in more complex ones, like the Penobscot River Estuary in eastern Maine. 

The National Science Foundation awarded Ross, an assistant professor of hydraulics and water resources engineering at the University of Maine, a more than $600,000 CAREER Award to improve scientists’ understanding of how estuary shape, river discharge and tides influence fresh and saltwater mixing. The award is the organization’s most prestigious for early career faculty.

Salt water from the sea blends with fresh water from rivers at the mouths of estuaries, which forms a brackish water that flows back into the sea. Ross says the extent of the mixing process can influence how long particles, such as contaminants, excess nutrients and larvae, remain in an estuary, as well whether it experiences hypoxia — or low oxygen levels. Tides can increase the amount of mixing, further affecting the movement of waterborne materials.  

Previous studies into the dynamics of fresh and saltwater blending focus primarily on partially-mixed estuaries, meaning they experience moderate freshwater inflow from rivers, and estuaries with basic dimensions, Ross says. As a result, current research provides less insight into estuaries with complicated topographies like irregular and fluctuating depth and width, headlands and constructions, and estuaries that have relatively large or small freshwater inputs from rivers, all of which can create more or less mixing.

Ross, therefore, will use on-site data and numerical model simulations to quantify the mixing processes in more complex estuaries from across the world. Her research will encompass the Penobscot River Estuary, which experiences moderate river input and tides; the Reloncavi Fjord in the Chilean Patagonia, which has large river input and small tides, and the Gironde Estuary in southwest France, which has large river input and tides. Exploring a variety of estuaries can provide insight into how tides, freshwater input and topography affect the mixing process.

“The interface and exchange of ocean and river water in estuaries greatly influences the hydrodynamics, circulation patterns and transport of material, but we don’t yet fully understand the exchange process,” she says. “I aim to better understand this process and in turn use it to help negotiate and implement pollution and seafood management strategies in estuaries in complicated topographic settings, partly by refining approaches for determining timescales for transport of water borne materials like pollutants, larvae, and harmful algal blooms.” 

Ross has dedicated much of her scientific career toward investigating the physics of estuaries, particularly its flow and the mechanisms that influence it. 

Her recently published research includes quantifying the dynamics of the Jordan River in Down East Maine to understand how they affect particle movement, and creating a framework for reviewing tidal turbine placement in estuaries. Ross also is working on developing a tool to predict how biotoxins from algal blooms travel through estuarine and coastal waters. She has conducted previous studies in the Penobscot River Estuary, Reloncavi Fjord and Gironde Estuary, and plans to use data from them for her CAREER Award project. 

Ross has already created models for the three estuaries, which will produce simulations for her and two graduate students to analyze for their results. 

The ones for the Reloncavi Fjord and Penobscot River Estuary, however, need validation using on-site data. 

One graduate student will help verify the accuracy of the Penobscot model by tasking high school students from Maine Ocean School in Searsport with collecting data from 12 spots in the estuary continually over the course of the five-year-long project. The other graduate student will use publicly available data for the Reloncavi Fjord to validate their model. 

After completing her study, Ross will create and share lesson plans about her findings for high school math and science classes, which she says should teach students about “the differences among the three estuaries, explain simple tidal and volume conservation theory and introduce data visualization tools.” 

Ross also plans on sharing the findings from her research on the Penobscot River Estuary in a yearly Summer Lecture Series at the UMaine Hutchinson Center in Belfast, Maine starting in 2022.

“Estuarine ecosystems are important to us commercially and recreationally, but they are also very delicate ecosystems,” Ross says. “I believe it is important to educate our community and the next generation of scientists and coastal managers on these vital coastal environments as early as possible.”

 

What to call seafood made from fish cells

Rutgers study confirms “cell-based” and “cell-cultured” work best

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FOOD COMPANIES, REGULATORS, MARKETERS, JOURNALISTS AND OTHERS SHOULD USE THE TERMS “CELL-BASED” OR “CELL-CULTURED” WHEN LABELING AND TALKING ABOUT SEAFOOD PRODUCTS MADE FROM THE CELLS OF FISH OR SHELLFISH, ACCORDING TO A NEW RUTGERS STUDY IN THE JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE. view more 

CREDIT: RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

New Brunswick, N.J. (Aug. 9, 2021) – Food companies, regulators, marketers, journalists and others should use the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured” when labeling and talking about seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish, according to a new Rutgers study in the Journal of Food Science.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a “common or usual name” on their labels, so consumers can make informed choices.

With more than 70 companies around the world developing cell-cultured protein products and more than $360 million invested in their development in 2020 alone, the adoption of one common name is crucial as products move closer to commercialization. 

The study by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, confirmed the results from his earlier study comparing seven potential names for these products.

In the new study, a representative sample of 1,200 consumers evaluated packages of Atlantic salmon designed to mimic those found in grocery stores, labeled with “cell-based seafood” or “cell-cultured seafood”.

The names were evaluated using five criteria to test their ability to meet FDA labeling regulations and producers’ needs to sell their products. These criteria included each term's ability to help consumers distinguish cell-cultured seafood from wild and farmed fish; to signal its potential as an allergen; to be seen as an appropriate term for the product; to not disparage cell-cultured or conventional products; and to not evoke thoughts, images or emotions that the products aren’t safe, healthy, and nutritious.

“The results suggest that both ‘cell-based seafood’ and ‘cell-cultured seafood’ meet FDA regulations,” Hallman said. “They help the majority of consumers understand that the new products are produced in a different way from the ‘wild-caught’ and ‘farm-raised’ fish they may already be buying. At the same time, consumers also recognized that if they are allergic to seafood, they shouldn’t eat the product.”

The study’s participants reported slightly more positive overall impressions, slightly greater interest in tasting and slightly greater likelihood of purchasing the products labeled as “cell-based seafood” than those labeled as “cell-cultured seafood.”

Citing Hallman’s research, the National Fisheries Institute (representing the fisheries industry), the Environmental Defense Fund, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (representing the cell-cultured protein industry) have begun to coalesce around use of the term “cell-cultured.”

“Both names work well,” Hallman said. “The key is to choose a single term and to get everyone to adopt it. That will reduce confusion and ultimately help consumers understand what they are buying.”

The new products are produced using the same muscle cells, fat cells and connective tissue cells from fish species and are expected to look, taste and have the same nutritional qualities and health benefits as conventional seafood. These new products will be produced in sterile environments, so they will not contain mercury, pesticides, microplastics, antibiotics and other contaminants. Additionally, companies will only produce the parts of the fish that consumers eat, resulting in less food waste, while providing year-round availability, consistent quality and sustainable production practices.

The study was supported by BlueNalu, a San Diego company led by Lou Cooperhouse, former director of Rutgers Food Innovation Center. Hallman has served as director of Rutgers Food Policy Institute and chaired the FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee. He serves on the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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Broadcast interviews: Rutgers University has broadcast-quality TV and radio studios available for remote live or taped interviews with Rutgers experts. For more information, contact John Cramer at john.cramer@rutgers.edu

ABOUT RUTGERS—NEW BRUNSWICK
Rutgers University–New Brunswick is where Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, began more than 250 years ago. Ranked among the world’s top 60 universities, Rutgers’s flagship is a leading public research institution and a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. It has an internationally acclaimed faculty, 12 degree-granting schools and the Big Ten Conference’s most diverse student body.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Food Science

DOI

10.1111/1750-3841.15860

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A comparison of cell-based and cell-cultured as appropriate common or usual names to label products made from the cells of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Aug-2021

 

Climate change ‘double whammy’ could kill off fish species

Warming waters rob fish of ability to both move and adapt to cope

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF READING

Many commonly-eaten fish could face extinction as warming oceans due to climate change increases pressure on their survival while also hampering their ability to adapt.

New research suggests that fish like sardines, pilchards and herring will struggle to keep pace with accelerating climate change as warmer waters reduce their size, and therefore their ability to relocate to more suitable environments.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, also provides the first evidence to counter the scientific theory that decreased movement will result in more species, by suggesting the opposite is true. This means many species will also be less able to evolve to cope with warmer temperatures, increasing their risk of dying out.

Professor Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and co-author of the study, said: “Warming waters are a double whammy for fish, as they not only cause them to evolve to a smaller size, but also reduce their ability to move to more suitable environments.

“Our research supports the theory that fish will get smaller as oceans warm under climate change, but reveals the worrying news that they will also not be able to evolve to cope as efficiently as first thought. With sea temperatures rising faster than ever, fish will very quickly get left behind in evolutionary terms and struggle to survive.

“This has serious implications for all fish and our food security, as many of the species we eat could become increasingly scarce or even non-existent in decades to come.”

The study, led by the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) in Chile and the University of Reading in the UK, used statistical analyses of a large dataset of globally distributed fish species to study their evolution over the past 150 million years. The study provides first solid evidence of how historical global temperature fluctuations have affected the evolution of these species.

It focused on Clupeiforms - a highly diverse group of fish found all over the world, which includes important species for fisheries, such as anchovies, Atlantic herring, Japanese pilchard, Pacific herring, and South American pilchard. However, the findings have implications for all fish.

Fish have thus far only had to deal with a maximum average ocean temperature rise of around 0.8°C per millennium. This is far lower than current warming rates reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of 0.18°C per decade since 1981.

The findings support the long-held expectation among scientists that fish will generally get smaller and move less as world warms, due to having to increase their metabolism and therefore needing more oxygen to sustain their body functions. This will impact fish species because larger fish are able to travel longer distances owing to their greater energy reserves, whereas smaller fish are less able to seek out new environments with favourable conditions as the climate changes.

However, the research contradicts the assumption that an increase in smaller fish will mean more new species emerging because of concentrating genetic variations within local areas.

Instead, the scientists found warmer waters would lead to fewer new species developing, robbing fish of another of their key weapons to cope with climate change.

Overfishing has also been found to make fish smaller in size, so the new study adds to the list of pressures they face as a consequence of human actions.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-021-01123-5

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Historic warming consistently decreased size, dispersal and speciation rate of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

 

Why  WHITE middle-class residents want to stay put after floodwaters recede

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

Flood disasters like Hurricane Harvey lead some people to move far from the places they had called home. But a new study from Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that middle-class people who made long-term plans to stay in their neighborhoods before they flooded are less likely to relocate even if they suffered significant damage.

The study’s findings are outlined in “Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster,” which will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Social Problems. The paper is now available online.

Researchers Anna Rhodes, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice, and Max Besbris, an assistant professor of sociology at Wisconsin-Madison, examined how Harvey affected the housing decisions made by middle-class residents of Friendswood, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Over the course of two years after the storm, the researchers conducted a series of interviews with residents in 59 households that flooded.

Rhodes, the study’s lead author, said flood victims who stayed put did so because of plans they made before the storm. Most of the people who were interviewed stayed in their homes, even though they not only had the financial means to move, they also faced pressure from friends and family to relocate to less vulnerable places with similar amenities.

“What we found is that massive damage, social pressure and the revealed risk of living near a creek that severely overran its banks during Harvey were not enough to get most residents to consider leaving Friendswood,” Besbris said. “Instead, most people thought they would stay in their homes for many years to come and these plans were very durable.”

On the other hand, most of the households who decided to move after the storm indicated they left because they had already made well-defined plans to a move before the hurricane hit.

“In the face of an unexpected residential decision after Hurricane Harvey, it was residents who were already thinking about moving that were most likely to decide not to return to their flood-damaged homes,” Rhodes said.

She also noted that none of the families who chose to stay or leave were offered buyouts. In order to help people living in vulnerable areas consider moving, Rhodes said it’s important to understand how they ultimately make the decision to stay or leave.

“Future work dealing with post-disaster policies should be designed with mobility in mind,” Rhodes said.

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JOURNAL

Social Problems

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2021

Floods in China's southwest impacts hundreds of thousands, state media says

Parts of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province, including Ganzi, have reported heavy rains that began Friday, according to Chinese state media. 

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities said that more than 440,000 people in southwestern Sichuan Province have been affected in the aftermath of torrential rains and floods.

Heavy rains of up to nearly 9 inches that began Friday caused rivers to swell and flooded six cities or regions in the province, including Luzhou, Mianyang, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong and Ganzi, state media reported.

In Nanchong, a monitoring station reported 17 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period, Xinhua said Monday.

According to China Central Television, 45 houses had collapsed in the province by Saturday and 118 other homes were severely damaged. Cost of damage at the time was estimated at $38.5 million.

Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said that it has deployed relief workers to five cities and 12 counties.

Evacuations are ongoing, according to state media. On Sunday, authorities said more than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Xinhua reported.

The natural disaster response in China's southwest comes less than a week after China said more than 300 people had died in the aftermath of flooding in Henan Province.

The floods in central China affected 14.5 million people and forced more than 933,000 people to evacuate, according to Henan's provincial authorities last week.

Liu Junyan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner, said that climate change has made "extreme weather like heat waves and floods more frequent and more deadly in the past 20 years," according to Bloomberg last month.

China has attempted to address flooding with the construction of dams, dikes and levees since the 1950s, but the policy may not be entirely effective.

Kirk Barlow, an analyst with International Rivers in Oakland, Calif., said that as "dams get larger, they tend to complicate flooding controls due to the unpredictability of climate change," according to Christian Science Monitor last month.

Dams in China collapsed this year, according to Barlow.

Hairs of new carnivorous plant trap gnats, but allow bees to pollinate flowers

Triantha occidentalis produces flowering stems with sticky hairs that trap small gnats and midges, and isotopic analysis has confirmed that the plant can successfully digest the trapped insects. Photo by Danilo Lima

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Botanists have identified a new carnivorous plant in western North America. The species, Triantha occidentalis, represents the 12th independent origin of plant carnivory.

Found in bogs and wetlands from California to Alaska, and as far inland as Montana, Triantha occidentalis sprouts tall flowering stems with small, sticky hairs that trap gnats and midges

According to a new paper, published online Monday in the journal PNAS, more than half the plant's nitrogen is sourced from the small insects ensnared by its hairs.

The insect-eating plant is a member of the Alismatales order, a large group of mostly aquatic flowering plants belonging to the Monocotyledons clade. Monocots include thousands of grass and grass-like flowering plants

"What's particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers," lead study author Qianshi Lin said in a press release.

"On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don't want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce," said Lin, who was a doctoral student at UBC at the time of the study.

However, scientists determined that the plant species' insect-trapping hairs aren't all that sticky. The hairs possess just enough adhesiveness to ensnare small species, gnats and midges, while allowing bees and butterflies to come and go undeterred

While surveying the genome of Triantha occidentalis, scientists noticed the plant was missing a gene frequently absent in carnivorous species. Given its close proximity to other known carnivorous plants, researchers estimated the species might also be digesting insects.

Carnivorous plants are most common in habitats where nutrients are scarce but water and sunlight ware abundant.

In the field, Lin fed the plants fruit flies tagged with stable isotope nitrogen-15. After tracking the path of the nitrogen isotope, researchers confirmed that the species acquires some 65% of its nitrogen from digested insects.

RELATEDFlower attracts pollinating flies by mimicking smell of attacked bee

Triantha occidentalis uses the enzyme phosphatase to break down phosphorous-bearing nutrients in the gnats and midges trapped by its hairs.

Though Triantha occidentalis is fairly common and found near many large cities, the plant's carnivory eluded scientists for decades.

Researchers now plan to take a closer look at other members of the Triantha genus to see if other carnivorous plants are hiding in plain sight.

"It seems likely that there are other members of this group that will turn out to be carnivorous," said co-author Tom Givnish, professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin.

that is wonderful said the elephant on the telephone or was it...

E.E. Cummings collection returned to library after more than 50 years

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- An Ohio library said a former patron mailed in an E.E. Cummings poetry collection that was more than 50 years overdue -- just weeks after a Bob Dyan record was returned 48 years late.

The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library said the poetry book arrived in the mail recently along with an anonymous apology letter and a "lucky $2 bill."

The letter writer said they were recently going through some old boxes of books when they came across the E.E. Cummings collection bearing a Cleveland Heights Public Library stamp.

"It's been over 50 years since I've lived in Cleveland, so this must have gotten boxed up when we moved," the letter reads. "I am so very sorry. Here's a lucky $2 bill for whoever opens this!"

The library said the person would not have faced any late fees, since the facility did away with fines in 2019.

The book arrived in the mail just weeks after a copy of the Bob Dylan record Self Portrait was returned by a person who checked it out 48 years earlier.

"We can't help wondering if [the E.E. Cummings customer] saw the news about the Bob Dylan album, and the fact that we don't charge fines anymore, and decided the time was right to come clean," Heights Libraries spokesperson Sheryl Banks told Patch.

The Elephant & The Butterfly by e. e. cummings

https://pixels.com/featured/elephant-e-e-cummings.html

Once upon a time there was an elephant who did nothing all day.

He lived by himself in a little house away at the very top of a curling road.

From the elephant’s house,this curling road went twisting away down until it found itself in a green valley where there was another little house,in which a butterfly lived.

One day the elephant was sitting in his little house and looking out of his window doing nothing(and feeling very happy because that was what he liked most to do)when along this curling road he saw somebody coming up and up toward his little house;and he opened his eyes wide,and felt very much surprised. “Whoever is that person who’s coming up along and along the curling road toward my little house?” the elephant said to himself.

And pretty soon he saw that it was a butterfly who was fluttering along the curling road ever so happily;and the elephant said: “My goodness, I wonder if he’s coming to call on me?” As the butterfly came nearer and nearer,the elephant felt more and more excited inside of himself. Up the steps of the little house came the butterfly and he knocked very gently on the door with his wing. “Is anyone inside?” he asked.

The elephant was ever so pleased,but he waited.

Then the butterfly knocked again with his wing,a little louder but still very gently,and said: “Does anyone live here,please?”

Still the elephant never said anything because he was too happy to speak.

A third time the butterfly knocked,this time quite loudly,and aksed: “Is anyone at home?” And this time the elephant said in a trembling voice: “I am.” The butterfly peeped in at the door and said: “Who are you,that live in this little house?” And the elephant peeped out at him and answered: “I’m the elephant who does nothing all day.” “Oh,” said the butterfly, “and may I come in?” “Please do,” the elephant said with a smile,because he was very happy. So the butterfly just pushed the little door open with his wing and came in.

Once upon a time there were seven trees which lived beside the curling road. And when the butterfly pushed the door with his wing and came into the elephant’s little house,one of the trees said to one of the trees: “I think it’s going to rain soon.”

“The curling road will be all wet and will smell beautifully,” said another tree to another tree.

Then a different tree said to a different tree: “How lucky for the butterfly that he’s safely inside the elephant’s little house,because he won’t mind the rain.”

But the littlest tree said: “I feel the rain already,” and sure enough,while the butterfly and the elephant were talking in the elephant’s little house away at the top of the curling road,the rain simply began falling gently everywhere;and the butterfly and the elephant looked out of the window together and they felt ever so safe and flad,while the curling road became all wet and began to smell beautifully just as the third tree had said.

Pretty soon it stopped raining and the elephant put his arm very gently around the little butterfly and said: “Do you love me a little?”

And the butterfly smiled and said: “No, I love you very much.”

Then the elephant said: “I’m so happy,I think we ought to go for a walk together you and I:for now the rain has stopped and the curling road smells beautifully.”

The butterfly said: “Yes,but where shall you and I go?”

“Let’s go away down and down the curling road where I’ve never been,” the elephant said to the little butterfly. And the butterfly smiled and said: “I’d love to go with you all the way down and down the curling road—let’s go out the little door of your house and down the steps together—shall we?”

So they came out together and the elephant’s arm was very gently around the butterfly. Then the littlest tree said to his six friends: “I believe the butterfly loves the elephant as much as the elephant loves the butterfly,and that makes me very happy,for they’ll love each other always.”

Down and down the curling road walked the elephant and the butterfly.

The sun was shining beautifully after the rain.

The curling road smelled beautifully of flowers.

A bird began to sing in a bush,and all the clouds went away out of the sky and it was Spring everywhere.

When they came to the butterfly’s house,which was down in the green valley which had never been so green,the elephant said: “Is this where you live?”

And the butterfly said: “Yes,this is where I live.”

“May I come into your house?” said the elephant.

“Yes,” said the butterfly. So the elephant just pushed the door gently with his trunk and they came into the butterfly’s house. And then the elephant kissed the butterfly very gently and the butterfly said: “Why didn’t you ever before come down into the valley where I live?” And the elephant answered, “Because I did nothing all day. But now that I know where you live,I’m coming down the curling road to see you every day,if I may—and may I come?” Then the butterfly kissed the elephant and said: “I love you,so please do.”

And every day after this the elephant would come down the curling road which smelled so beautifully(past the seven trees and the bird singing in the bush)to visit is little friend the butterfly.

And they loved each other always.

e.e. cummings’ Electric Fur. {Sex Poems 1/10}

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of your,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

~e.e. cummings

e.e. cummings

In his poetry, Cummings stressed the theme of individuality over modern conformist living. He innovated and experimented boldly in style, form, and even punctuation and grammar, signing his work “e.e. cummings.”* Cummings is best known for his peculiar approach to both capitalization and punctuation, which are seemingly placed at random, slicing up individual words as well as sentences. Many of his poems are better understood when taken as a whole on the written page. His poetry, idiosyncratic as it might first appear, grapples with something his father said in a sermon — echoing the insights of Emerson, Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson — “The Kingdom of Heaven is no spiritual roofgarden: It’s inside you.” Cummings` poetry is influenced by his Transcendentalist leanings, focusing on love and love of nature, as well as satire, and how the individual copes with the masses and the world around him. The early years Cummings was born Edward Estlin Cummings in October 1894, just outside of Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a Unitarian minister and one-time Harvard professor whose support of his son (and daughter) was assiduous. Greek and Latin came to Cummings as naturally as English, and they are given their due in some of his works: Xaipe: (“Rejoice!”) Seventy-one Poems, in Greek; Anthropos ("Mankind"), a play in Greek; and Puella Mea ("My Girl"), in Latin). Cummings graduated from Harvard with a BA in 1915 and an MA in 1916, after being published in the Harvard Monthly and the Harvard Advocate. He was counted among the "Harvard Aesthetes" that included the likes of John Dos Passos (the trilogy U.S.A., comprising The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) and S. Foster Damon. The war and beyond Much to Cummings’ chagrin, he and friend William Slater Brown, better known as the character “B” in Cummings’ novel/memoir The Enormous Room, were unceremoniously dumped into a French detention camp in a small Normandy town during World War I. The book relates the experiences Cummings and Brown endured during the three-and-a-half month-long nightmare, all due to an administrative snafu following his attempt to volunteer for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in France. Cummings and Brown were arrested on suspicion of espionage, even after they openly avowed their pacifist ideology. About the book, F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives — The Enormous Room, by E.E. Cummings . . . Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality." Significant literary works In addition to The Enormous Room, Cummings achieved notoriety for:

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) (he wanted “&” in the title; his publisher ignored his plea);

is 5 (1926), a collection of 88 poems;

Eimi (1933), a novel recounting his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, and his disillusionment with that society’s lack of intellectual and artistic freedom;

No Thanks (1935), self-published and bound at the top like a steno pad, meant as a snub to the 14 publishing houses that refused his work;
and

Fairy Tales (1965), containing four short stories published posthumously: "The Old Man Who Said `Why`," "The Elephant and The Butterfly," "The House That Ate Mosquito Pie," and "The Little Girl Named I."

Cummings, the painter Cummings was not just a one-trick pony of the avant garde. Not only did he see himself as a poet, essayist, and playwright, but as a painter, as well. His early influences began during his Harvard years with the artistic movements of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism. In particular, he admired the work of Pablo Picasso. His drawings and caricatures were published in the philosophical literary magazine, The Dial, during the 1920s.

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*About the lower case signature
Cummings signed his works (after the first few) with no capital letters (e.e. cummings), which led some to believe there were no upper case letters in his collection. That is not the case. He used capitals frequently, albeit not always conventionally. The same goes for spacing, word and line breaks, parentheses, and punctuation, not to mention grammar and syntax. The lower case signature was a kind of talisman for Cummings, a manifestation of his individuality in the world of literature. Debate went on for years as to the upper-lower case conundrum. The widow Cummings, his second wife, insists that, other than his signed work, the upper case is preferred.

e.e. cummings (u-s-history.com)

Herd of elephants wandering in China nearing return home


Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A herd of elephants that have been wandering throughout China neared the nature reserve on Monday that they had departed from more than a year ago.

The 14 elephants were in Yuanjing County on Sunday night, about 125 miles away from the reserve in the southwestern province of Yunnan after days of making their way back south.

The provincial government said officials would continue to work on returning the elephants to their natural habitat as they have tracked the herd with drones and guided them across the Yuanjiang River while opening a path back to the nature reserve.

The National Forestry and Grassland Administration said they were in a "suitable habitat" after making their way across the river.

Experts have also anticipated low temperatures are likely to push the elephants to return to the reserve more quickly.

In June, officials expressed concern as the herd approached the capital city of Kunming in the province of Yunnan.

A herd of 16 elephants began its migration in March 2020 and arrived in Pu'er in the Yunnan province in November, where they settled for five months as a female elephant gave birth.

Two elephants left the group and the remaining 15 continued north.

Later one male wandered away from the pack and was tranquilized and ultimately returned to the nature reserve.

Throughout their journey the elephants traveled more than 300 miles north, capturing the attention of social media and causing more than $1 million in damage including eating whole cornfields and smashing barns and cars.