360°

Panorama.dk is a photography site that can take you places you may never go.

See the world in 360°:

The Great Wall of China

The Taj Mahal

Mount Everest – also called Sagarmāthā

Also: The Jerome Foundation, created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), makes grants that support emerging artists in the creation, development and production of new works. The economy has taken a toll its toll. The Foundation will announce whether or not it will offer a 2010 Travel and Study Grant Program in early December 2009 in a posting on the Foundation’s website.

Find out if you are eligible to apply for a grant using the Jerome Foundation's interactive eligibility worksheet.

Get information on the foundation's current funding status (pdf).

The Secret Life of Plants

Historically, many botanists were also talented illustrators; handy with a sketch pad.

E. J. H. Corner's classic book, The Life of Plants, is filled with many botanical illustrations and it's the most fascinating introduction to botany you are likely to find.

Also: Little Shop of Horrors - Da Doo

Sustainable Cities

Grist posts a list of the "15 Most Sustainable American Cities."

As usual, Seattle wins.

If you don't think environmentalism has anything to do with being a teaching artist, you may be using a lot of unnecessary handouts. One of my colleagues always makes double-sided copies, and I admire that.

Also: Tree Hugger has a slideshow of "16 Dazzling Eco Paper Products at the 2009 Stationery Show."

I dig the Brooklyn-based, art-making duo that call themselves Enormous Champion.

The image is theirs, and it is for sale.

Stewardship

This smart lesson plan on the history of environmentalism is designed to help young people understand the effects of rapid industrialization on the environment and the emergence of the first conservation movement.

The plan is part of a modular curriculum called If Trees Could Talk and I found it on the website of the Forest History Society.

From the organization's website:

If Trees Could Talk: A Curriculum in Environmental History

If Trees Could Talk: A Curriculum in Environmental History is a 10-module, middle school curriculum that gives teachers the opportunity to download from our web site social studies activities that are based upon archival materials. The centerpiece of each module is a compilation of primary resources--documents, maps, newspaper articles, oral histories or photographs--from which students are asked to gather, examine, and analyze information, and synthesize insights. The curriculum is presently being tested by teachers around the United States and has already generated much popular support.

Trees are amazing.

Also: Whitman - Song of the Redwood Tree (excerpted from Leaves of Grass)

Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,	20
Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high,
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs—out of its foot-thick bark,
That chant of the seasons and time—chant, not of the past only, but the future.
3 You untold life of me,
And all you venerable and innocent joys,	25
Perennial, hardy life of me, with joys, ’mid rain, and many a summer sun,
And the white snows, and night, and the wild winds;
O the great patient, rugged joys! my soul’s strong joys, unreck’d by man;
(For know I bear the soul befitting me—I too have consciousness, identity,
And all the rocks and mountains have—and all the earth;)	30
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
Our time, our term has come.
Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers,
We who have grandly fill’d our time;
With Nature’s calm content, and tacit, huge delight,	35
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
And leave the field for them.