Matthew Battles
@mrbattles.bsky.social
Editor of ARNOLDIA, a magazine about the nature of trees, published by the Arnold Arboretum. Author of LIBRARY: AN UNQUIET HISTORY, TREE, & other books. Making music from old poems and the press of wild things. Posts are my own.
Used Organic Maps on a trip to the Maine Woods last weekend, and was delighted to discover it has such useful features as downloadable maps, navigation, and a Gulf of Mexico.
February 20, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Used Organic Maps on a trip to the Maine Woods last weekend, and was delighted to discover it has such useful features as downloadable maps, navigation, and a Gulf of Mexico.
There is such thing as free will, but that's not all there is.
December 9, 2024 at 4:21 PM
There is such thing as free will, but that's not all there is.
My first bandcamp release, a song adapted from a Wikipedia entry: matthewbattles.bandcamp.com/track/seiche...
Seiche (demo), by Matthew Battles
track by Matthew Battles
matthewbattles.bandcamp.com
December 4, 2024 at 2:29 PM
My first bandcamp release, a song adapted from a Wikipedia entry: matthewbattles.bandcamp.com/track/seiche...
I'm unsettled and inspired by this story of Cormac McCarthy's muse, whose life and person were so large he had to keep killing her off in fiction.
www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...
www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...
Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.”
When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history...
www.vanityfair.com
November 22, 2024 at 7:52 PM
I'm unsettled and inspired by this story of Cormac McCarthy's muse, whose life and person were so large he had to keep killing her off in fiction.
www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...
www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...
Reposted by Matthew Battles
We need your submissions!
I know you all were brilliant and published #envhist + #histtech articles in 2021-22, so submit them.
I know you all were brilliant and published #envhist + #histtech articles in 2021-22, so submit them.
We are seeking submissions to Joel Tarr Envirotech Article Prize for 2023.
For articles published in a journal or an article collection January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2022.
The prize had been dormant for a cycle, so we are catching up!
www.envirotechhistory.org/2024/10/25/c...
#envhist #histtech
For articles published in a journal or an article collection January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2022.
The prize had been dormant for a cycle, so we are catching up!
www.envirotechhistory.org/2024/10/25/c...
#envhist #histtech
Call for Applications: 2023 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize – Envirotech
www.envirotechhistory.org
November 19, 2024 at 11:39 AM
Reposted by Matthew Battles
The Fish
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
(Modernist poet Marianne Moore is LHL's #ScientistOfTheDay.)
www.lindahall.org/about/news/s...
#histSTM #OnThisDay 🗃️📜🐠
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
(Modernist poet Marianne Moore is LHL's #ScientistOfTheDay.)
www.lindahall.org/about/news/s...
#histSTM #OnThisDay 🗃️📜🐠
November 15, 2024 at 4:11 PM
The Fish
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
(Modernist poet Marianne Moore is LHL's #ScientistOfTheDay.)
www.lindahall.org/about/news/s...
#histSTM #OnThisDay 🗃️📜🐠
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
(Modernist poet Marianne Moore is LHL's #ScientistOfTheDay.)
www.lindahall.org/about/news/s...
#histSTM #OnThisDay 🗃️📜🐠
I posted this preview of my winter column after a string of seminal synchronicities—especially in connection with @alexismadrigal.bsky.social's post on the Parable of the Sower, that left me feeling electric and open in the midst of this dark turn.
matthewbattles.substack.com/p/the-seed-i...
matthewbattles.substack.com/p/the-seed-i...
The seed in winter
Finding faith in the hollowness of a moment like this
matthewbattles.substack.com
November 18, 2024 at 3:27 PM
I posted this preview of my winter column after a string of seminal synchronicities—especially in connection with @alexismadrigal.bsky.social's post on the Parable of the Sower, that left me feeling electric and open in the midst of this dark turn.
matthewbattles.substack.com/p/the-seed-i...
matthewbattles.substack.com/p/the-seed-i...
Reposted by Matthew Battles
MIT Press is having a holiday season promotion, so you can get 30% off DEEP DREAM: SCIENCE FICTION EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF ART, edited by me, on US orders until November 30, 2024 with code MITHOLIDAY at penguinrandomhouse.com:
Deep Dream
Ten acclaimed writers imagine the future of art across space and time.In this volume from the Twelve Tomorrows series, Deep Dream, ten writers imagine the di...
mitpress.mit.edu
November 13, 2024 at 2:07 PM
MIT Press is having a holiday season promotion, so you can get 30% off DEEP DREAM: SCIENCE FICTION EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF ART, edited by me, on US orders until November 30, 2024 with code MITHOLIDAY at penguinrandomhouse.com:
Some notes on meeting music where the music comes from, with a bit of my own: open.substack.com/pub/matthewb...
Where the singing comes from
Raveling and unraveling at the edge of music
open.substack.com
October 18, 2024 at 8:08 PM
Some notes on meeting music where the music comes from, with a bit of my own: open.substack.com/pub/matthewb...
Kat gave my project a needed shot of rigor and richness. If you're seeking editorial support, I heartily recommend!
I have immediate and future openings in my editing calendar. I work with novels and novellas, in multiple categories and genres. More info here: www.kathowardbooks.com/editing
Signal boosts very appreciated, thanks in advance.
Signal boosts very appreciated, thanks in advance.
Kat Howard — Editing
Kat Howard's goal as a freelance editor is to help writers get closer to
the book that they want to be writing. She works with writers at all career
stages and in various genres and covers things li...
www.kathowardbooks.com
February 22, 2024 at 8:54 PM
Kat gave my project a needed shot of rigor and richness. If you're seeking editorial support, I heartily recommend!
What a thrilling prospect!
The Metro NY Library Council, which serves a few hundred libraries + archives across NYC + Westchester (and for which I serve as board president), is launching a new ecological library — www.libraryfield.org — and soliciting CFPs for a community engagement consultant! metro.org/jobs/communi...
February 16, 2024 at 3:55 PM
What a thrilling prospect!
Reposted by Matthew Battles
“I think these photographs could inspire individuals to reclaim and cultivate these tree pits, even temporarily, especially in areas lacking green spaces. I created this map accessible to all with the hope that the data will be used somehow by other people.”
In Absentia - Urban Omnibus
Where street trees have gone missing, sculptural assemblages punctuate the pavement.
urbanomnibus.net
February 9, 2024 at 3:01 AM
“I think these photographs could inspire individuals to reclaim and cultivate these tree pits, even temporarily, especially in areas lacking green spaces. I created this map accessible to all with the hope that the data will be used somehow by other people.”
"(T)here exists no technical 'solution' or 'repair' for the geopolitical forces that converged to cause the deterioration of the teak window panels installed alongside a vestigial eucalyptus grove on Torrey Pines Mesa. What does exist are alternative means to adapt to those forces—to tend to them."
"'Tending' accepts, anticipates, + designs in consonance w/ inevitable change — + it understands this chg as a desirable expression of material properties, site dynamics, inter-species coexistence, + the behavior of bldgs + their contexts over ⏰. 'Tending' is [a diff] mode of aesthetic cooperation"
"Kahn’s designs seem to anticipate the evolving tendencies of materials over time, more so than many of his fellow mid-20th-century modernists. Yet at the Salk Institute, the client did not share the architect’s propensity for weathering, for allowing the wood to fade to a muted gray"
February 9, 2024 at 3:28 PM
"(T)here exists no technical 'solution' or 'repair' for the geopolitical forces that converged to cause the deterioration of the teak window panels installed alongside a vestigial eucalyptus grove on Torrey Pines Mesa. What does exist are alternative means to adapt to those forces—to tend to them."
Yikes, I fell hard for this!
Just FYI: Princeton University Press is having their 75% off sale on a lot of their books, this is how I buy so many of my field guides and other references for birds and ecology! There are all sorts of topics too, it's a great way to stock up on stuff for your interests but also explore new ones.
Book Lover Sale
Stay connected for new books and special offers. Subscribe to receive a welcome discount for your next order.
press.princeton.edu
February 8, 2024 at 7:27 PM
Yikes, I fell hard for this!
Delighted to realize that city lights in NASA's eclipse-path map aren't illustration, but data, from the agency's "Black Marble" project. svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/... blackmarble.gsfc.nasa.gov#media
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
February 8, 2024 at 4:38 PM
Delighted to realize that city lights in NASA's eclipse-path map aren't illustration, but data, from the agency's "Black Marble" project. svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/... blackmarble.gsfc.nasa.gov#media
Don't go with your reactive impulse. Read the piece again—read it all for the first time—and then try to believe the author means what she says, feels what she says. Let that truth soak in. See if you can come into relation with it. Then see where you stand. scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcont...
February 8, 2024 at 4:34 PM
Don't go with your reactive impulse. Read the piece again—read it all for the first time—and then try to believe the author means what she says, feels what she says. Let that truth soak in. See if you can come into relation with it. Then see where you stand. scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcont...
Seeking images of kodama (Japanese tree spirits) for an article, reveling in this edition of Toriyama Sekien's Hundred Monsters Ancient and Modern, from the Edo Period (18th century). www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
February 8, 2024 at 4:02 PM
Seeking images of kodama (Japanese tree spirits) for an article, reveling in this edition of Toriyama Sekien's Hundred Monsters Ancient and Modern, from the Edo Period (18th century). www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
Reposted by Matthew Battles
"Our lives and the elements are, inextricably, enmeshed."
Desert, Fire, Flood – by Zied Ben Romdhane
Amid a series of intensifying natural disasters in Tunisia and British Columbia, photographer Zied Ben Romdhane captures the overwhelming power of the elements to shape and disrupt human life.
emergencemagazine.org
February 7, 2024 at 6:16 AM
"Our lives and the elements are, inextricably, enmeshed."
Reposted by Matthew Battles
Contemplating the ways our future is increasingly entangled with that of the Thwaites Glacier, Elizabeth Rush considers how she might be able to “get the ice to speak.” Listen to this week’s podcast, “Glacial Longings.” emergencemagazine.org/podcast/
February 8, 2024 at 2:36 PM
Contemplating the ways our future is increasingly entangled with that of the Thwaites Glacier, Elizabeth Rush considers how she might be able to “get the ice to speak.” Listen to this week’s podcast, “Glacial Longings.” emergencemagazine.org/podcast/
To all my new followers, I primarily post here about microwave cookery and Escape from New York fanfiction.
JK. I don't have any new followers.
JK. I don't have any new followers.
February 8, 2024 at 3:30 PM
To all my new followers, I primarily post here about microwave cookery and Escape from New York fanfiction.
JK. I don't have any new followers.
JK. I don't have any new followers.
It's Take Your Bath Mat to Work Day!
February 8, 2024 at 3:06 PM
It's Take Your Bath Mat to Work Day!
On the menu of futility that is a career in writing and publishing, requesting poetry permissions is always the daily special.
February 8, 2024 at 11:38 AM
On the menu of futility that is a career in writing and publishing, requesting poetry permissions is always the daily special.
Lily Gladstone: "To me, the genre of the film is a trickster story.... (W)hen you’re young... they’re funny. And then, when you get older, you start learning the lessons that are hidden in the story. So that’s kind of Mollie from beginning to end." www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
February 6, 2024 at 9:37 PM
Lily Gladstone: "To me, the genre of the film is a trickster story.... (W)hen you’re young... they’re funny. And then, when you get older, you start learning the lessons that are hidden in the story. So that’s kind of Mollie from beginning to end." www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...