World Listening Day (WLD) was three weeks ago (July 18 2020). According to
National Today (NT) it is an event which
"is put on every year by the World Listening Project, a nonprofit organization that is 'devoted to understanding the world and its natural environment, societies and cultures through the practice of listening and field recording.' They explore acoustic ecology, a discipline that studies the relationship between humans and the natural world as mediated through sound. It falls on July 18 to honor the birthday of Raymond Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer and environmentalist who is seen as the founder of acoustic ecology. World Listening Day was established in 2010, and each year the holiday has a specific theme tied to it...
Given the lockdowns and re-openings I'm not sure how the holiday was celebrated this year, however I did think of WLD when I saw
American robins having a convo in
my rooftop garden the other day. They can be seen in the series of images atop this entry.
In any event, NT claims last year’s theme was
'Listening to the Ground,' which asks us to consider the sounds of the literal ground in all its surfaces, from soil to asphalt, whether we’re losing metaphorical ground, and whether we can find new ground by listening for it..." which is what Cam the female
cardinal pictured below seems to be doing.
She is also featured within a
in a prior blog posting when I explained that Cam, who used to visit my place) always believed that it is important for everyone of us to have sharp ears and she spent time taking care of hers! This is one of many points that Cam and I discuss in volume one of our three volume book series,
Words In Our Beak.
Reading each of these books is a great way to listen to concerns about fauna, flora,
insects and many other topics. I'll leave it here for the day, dear reader, but not without sharing the following content (in belated honor of the WLD holiday), which was included in my
2-5-2019 post here on Blogger. It is an excerpt from
Charolette's Web...
...a book by
E.B. White and here's the passage (which relates to listening) I have in mind:
"I worry about Fern. Did you hear the way she rambled on about the animals, pretending that they talked?' [Mrs. Arable the wife of Wilbur's owner speaking about her daughter to her husband.]
''Mr Arable chuckled. '''Maybe they do talk,''' he said. "I've sometimes wondered.
'''I don't think it's normal. You know perfectly well animals don't talk.''' [Mrs. Arable replied]
'''Maybe our ears aren't as sharp as Fern's," "Mr. Avery said."
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.