Category Archive: Nature
Balloon Boy
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite covers the first parachute (an umbrella contraption launched in Montpellier, France in 1783) and the first hot-air balloon, the ornate aerostatic machine which took off from Versailles as King Louis XVI watched below. Now a Brooklyn…
Fluturas and Birrabirros
I was remembering today how a friend at school learned how to say ‘butterfly’ in some twenty different languages. It’s such a pretty project. So I started making a list of my favorite butterfly translations, and it seems to be…
Season of the Crickets
Now is the time, according to Japanese connaiseurs, when the suzumushi cricket sings at its sweetest, in the autumn, just before it dies. I write about these insect musicians in the Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, but I couldn’t give you…
The Heights
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uk_viH4Unw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Besides being incredibly beautiful, this video of a rocket launcher falling from space back into the Earth’s atmosphere takes up several threads running throughout Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: clouds, pioneering air-travel (in hot-air balloons and via the first parachute), silence…
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