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Photo: Merlin Tuttle/Bat Conservation International (and an exquisite photo it is!) I spend much of my time using coffee to teach geography, and geography to teach coffee. I am happy to do the same with tea and chocolate , and though I know relatively little, I sometimes take the same approach with wine. Today, it is tequila's turn. As funny as it might sound at first, there are very serious connections to be made between the health of bat populations and the practices of those who grow agave for tequila and its earthier cousin, mezcal. We first learned of the problem 25 years ago while living in Tucson, near the northern limits of agave. Just in time for Halloween, NPR reporter Neda Ulaby explains the problem that greater demand is placing on a " Once Boo-tiful Relationship ."

My first academic dinner was on the 10th day of a November. It was in a restaurant near our undergraduate campus that I had previously thought of as a bar that was just a bit nicer than our usual dives. A guest speaker had come to our class on the philosophy of religion (I had taken several classes and even completed an internship in this area), and our professor had taken the speaker and just a couple of students out to dinner afterwards. Near the end of the meal, a couple of the servers came out with a cake. It might have had five candles, and I am pretty sure they were trying to sing. They faltered a bit as they addressed "Dr. Luther" and looked back and forth at each of the people at the table who seemed old enough to be doctors, none of whom were responding. It turns out that our Dr. Benson was a bit of a joker, and a bigger devotee of Martin Luther than I had realized. I knew Dr. Benson was a protestant, but I did not know that he was such  a protestant. I also did no

Today it was reported that Vice President Pence "had to" break a tie in the Senate. Years after financial companies drove a thriving U.S. economy into the proverbial ditch, rules were about to take effect that would allow citizens to file class-action lawsuits against financier malfeasance. Far from serving the public good, V.P. Pence put his thumb on the scale of justice, in favor of the unjust. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.) The action, of course, brings Professor Woodie Guthrie's famous words to mind. To an ordinary person, a bank is at least  as dangerous as a bank robber.

This is a critical time for the world's retreating glaciers. In fact, it could be said that the most critical time -- when their retreat could have been arrested -- has already passed. Still, the status of glaciers are among the strongest indicators of climate change, and their loss is among its most dangerous consequences. First, their role as indicators. Glaciers are long-term accumulations of frozen water (ice and snow), usually at high elevation. During particularly cold periods in the Pleistocene, continental glaciers were found at sea level, but in the Holocene epoch, glaciers have been strictly alpine. Wherever they are found, they represent a balance between a colder zone of accumulation -- in which more snow falls during a year than melts -- and a warmer zone of ablation, in which the opposite occurs. The exact position of the nose of the glacier will fluctuate seasonally and over time, as this balance shifts. When the position of the nose at a given time of year is consis

Kayla America Fuentes interviewing Cuban Alfredo "Rusty" Monsees at his home on the eponymous road in Brownsville Photo: Debbie Nathan. When I was teaching at UTB-Texas Southmost College (now UT-RGV ) , some of my students walked to class directly from their homes in Mexico. The fellow in this story grew up -- and continues to live -- in the tiny patch of Texas even farther south than THAT. Kayla America Fuentes is a local teenager heard a lot of stories about him, and decided to do an interview. The result is an article whose unconventional title mentions the subject, the reporter, and the motivation for the reporting itself. The Old Man Who Calls Border Patrol on Immigrants, and the Teen Girl Who Asked Him Why shows that she is off to a great start as a journalist. She already has the curiosity, tenacity, and writing skills of a seasoned reporter. Rather than try to summarize her work or comment on its implications, I encourage readers to read the article to the end. It gi

"Not all who wander are lost" ~~ J.R.R. Tolkien, linguist, author, and honorary geographer I have often said that if you enjoy being lost, you should travel with geographers. It works especially well if we are in a van. Last year four of us -- with three GPS units -- got lost going to a school we had been to before . But we learned so much local geography along the way, so we considered it a win. It should come as no surprise, then, that geographers are not to be trusted with the drawing of regional boundaries. The American Association of Geographers (née Association of American Geographers) boast nine regional divisions , shown here: Click to enlarge Keeping in mind that regions are to geography as gravity is to physics: understanding regions is what we do , it is fascinating that this is what we have come up with. I have been in all of nine of these regions, and have taught or studied geography in five of them. I first noticed something odd the first time I was involved in

I started this blog post just after Hurricane Maria made landfall, as it became clear that an unprecedented onslaught of back-to-back major hurricanes was to be compounded by unprecedented neglect of a natural disaster on U.S. territory. I heard the phrase "open-ended crisis" in a discussion on National Public Radio, as I began to gather links and to write. As I kept a growing number of tabs open on my Mac, this post grew in length and complexity -- and somehow I eventually lost all of that writing. I did manage to keep most of the links that I had found most instructive, though, so I am going to share them here with minimal commentary. Unfortunately, they are going to be relevant for a very long time to come. First, one video recommendation: For U.S. mainlanders who do not know much about Puerto Rico -- which is to say, most U.S. mainlanders -- I highly recommend the 2006 film   ¡ Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know) by the comedi

My grandfather climbed poles for Ma Bell his whole adult life. And after hurricanes, he would travel to restore phones and electricity -- climbing poles by hand.  Weston Tolls It's easier now with bucket trucks, but not exactly easy. I remember driving through the town of Weston a few years ago, just before a major storm was to hit the Boston area. As I approached an overpass that connects Interstate 90 (Mass Turnpike and NY State Thruway) to Boston's ring road 128, I saw a caravan like this one pouring into Boston from the west.  I knew what those men and women would be doing for us, and that they had traveled all night to do it. I almost wept at the sight. When this happens on an I SLAND, even more effort is needed. Ships, cargo planes, whatever it takes. BEFORE Irma and BEFORE Maria, those trucks should have been in motion, headed to the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. We should  do the same for other islands in our hemisphere, but we absolutely must  do it for those i

I am not a librarian -- not nearly well-organized enough for that -- but I have picked up a lot of librarian values from three decades spent with a librarian who is not only an extraordinary practitioner of the bibliothecary arts, but also a scholar of knowledge itself. Lately, her scholarship on information literacy in general has led her to collaboration on empirical research into the "fake news" phenomenon in particular. That jarring phrase has also had the attention of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, which decided to devote its Annual Forum to the topic this year. This turned out to be a perfect date for a geographer and librarian, especially since the forum was to be held in the Boston Public Library ! The event was entitled What's New About Fake News? , and was in the form of a panel discussion, with journalist Sasha Pfeiffer (of both the Boston Globe and WBUR ) serving as moderator. The panel was very well chosen -- and would no doubt have been

Tea and coffee provide stimulation by way of a compound found in both plants and in the respective beverages produced from their leaves and seeds, respectively. The stimulant effect differs between the two, however, and also differs considerably according to the way tea, in particular, is processed. Image: Tea Class The differences between tea and coffee is substantial enough, in fact, that when caffeine was first isolated in tea in 1827, it was thought to be a different compound and was known as theine. The Oxford English dictionary provides two alternate pronunciations of this awkward word, using both proper phonetic symbols and recordings. I learned of this distinction from the Cisco Brew  article Caffeine and Tea , which explains not only why caffeine behaves differently in tea and coffee, but also how caffeine levels vary according to various tea preparations. The article alludes to preparations (white, green, oolong, black), origins, and varietals, notably sinensis and assami

Many who call for the building of a border wall do not realize that it already exists. A recent project by  JR Artist recently called attention to this division that has already been imposed, through an installation in Tecate/Tecate. One important image is of a baby overlooking the wall. Babies, of course, do not understand such barriers. Image: JR Artist As someone who spent seven years living near the border, I am even more intrigued -- and encouraged -- by the picnic that was held as part of the celebration of this art. A band ("conjunto" in Spanish, or "together") was divided by the wall but played together for those who had assembled for the meal. Image: JR Artist -- be sure to read his description and the comments In hurricanes, the term "eye wall" refers to the very turbulent ring of clouds surrounding the calm center of the storm. The picnickers who ring this eye are exhibiting calm within a storm of a different kind. The artist and an agent were