Perennial agriculture has the potential to revolutionize farming, creating low-maintenance crops that don’t require frequent replanting and use of heavy machinery or cause nutrient depletion in the soil. Read more about Jerry Glover and the Land Institute in Nature or find out firsthand about Land Institute research in “Future Farming: A Return to Roots?” by Jerry Glover, Cindy Cox, and John P. Reganold in Scientific American.

Monterey Bay Aquarium’s popular exhibit Jellies: Living Art will be closing September 14, 2008. This exhibit contains both spectacular living specimens of a variety of jellies (“jellyfish”) from around the world rarely seen in aquariums and a variety of art that echoes the shapes, colors, and movements of the jellies, ranging from Blaschka glass models of jellies and engravings by Ernst Haeckel (left) to Dale Chihuly’s spectacular glass art.

Jellies: Living Art was unusually visitor-driven in its design. The aquarium interviewed over 300 visitors about their experience with the permanent jelly exhibit, and found that 97% wanted an aesthetic experience–and 35% cared only about the aesthetic experience, not the content. Many visitors enjoy simply being with the jellies. [1]

Jellies: Living Art celebrates the beauty of living jellies and how they and their environment have inspired artistic works. While conservation messages are present, the exhibit focuses primarily on aesthetics, not science. The exhibit proved overwhelmingly popular–it opened in 2000, and has been extended several times due to public demand.

Although it’s hard for art to compete with jellies in my mind (my favorites are the Mediterranean jellies, left), I was particularly struck by the Blaschka glass models (c. 1886), which were created much earlier than most of the Blaschka models I have seen elsewhere, such as the glass flowers at Harvard. While delicate and beautiful, they are much less strikingly realistic and delicate than the Blaschkas’ later works.

Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, a Bohemian-born father-son team of glassworkers based in Germany, created hundreds of educational glass models of sea life and terrestrial plants for universities and institutes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These models, unlike preserved and pressed specimens, retained color and shape (particularly important for jellies), making them perfect for teaching science. The Blaschkas used wire armatures, glue, and paint as well as glass to create their realistic sculptures. No one since has been able to replicate their techniques.

One intriguing aspect of the Blaschka’s marine models, particularly the later ones, is their “dry” appearance. However, as artist William Warmus notes, “Wetness is given to us by visual cues–drops of water, irregularities of sheen–that can’t exist beneath the waves.” Warmus’s fascinating essay on the Blaschka marine invertebrates contains photographs of some of their more sophisticated jelly models, almost indistinguishable from real jellies. [2]

According to docents, the jellies from Jellies: Living Art will be moved to permanent exhibits or to other aquariums. The permanent jelly exhibit on the second floor will remain open (photo at left).

Where: Monterey Bay Aquarium, 886 Cannery Row, Monterey, CA 93940 – 1085, USA
When: Until September 14, 2008
More Information: www.montereybayaquarium.org

[1] ZooLex, a resource for animal exhibit design, discusses the method behind the exhibit design in more detail.

[2] The Design Museum’s touring exhibit of Blaschka marine models also contains some spectacular jellies.

Photos © 2008 Melissa Barton

Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing, by Elise Hancock
ISBN 0801873304
This slim little book doesn’t talk about marketing or selling your writing at all; it talks about crafting a good science story (although the principles are broadly applicable), and does so in a clear, elegant way that makes it a genuinely enjoyable book to read. I reread Ideas into Words periodically to remind myself that science stories are everywhere, and not always obviously science.

A Field Guide for Science Writers, eds. by Deborah Blum, Mary Knudson (1st and 2nd ed.), and Robin Marantz Henig (2nd ed.)
ISBN 0195124944 (1st ed.), 0195174992 (2nd ed.)
This is cheating, because the two editions are actually completely different books, and both are full of excellent essays about writing techniques, finding stories, covering difficult science and environmental topics, marketing, and working on the PR side. Both are invaluable resources for the new science writer. The first edition is out of print, so snap it up if you find a used copy.

Word Painting, by Rebecca McClanahan
ISBN 1582970254
This is the best general book on writing craft that I’ve read. It’s about writing vivid and meaningful description, and is equally useful for the writer of creative nonfiction, fiction, or poetry. A truly inspiring book.

The Renegade Writer, by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell
ISBN 1933338008
It’s kind of a cliched book for my top 5, but this is really a very useful introduction to the business of writing and marketing yourself. Not all of the ideas are “renegade,” but the ones I’ve tried so far have generally been helpful, and it’s a nicely organized quick reference book. I also read the Renegade Writer Blog.

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments, by Jenna Glatzer
ISBN 097220265X
I find this book to be a nice compliment to The Renegade Writer, and I appreciate Glatzer’s specific examples of how she broke into trades and worked her way up to major consumer magazines.

Not on the list, thanks to the internet: Writer’s Market
While I liked the essays and articles on writing and selling in the front, I like not having to buy a new copy every couple years and saving the shelf space more. It’s not a comprehensive index of all publications that use freelancers, but it’s a very good starting place.

I really enjoyed writing this up–the Kudia River fossils are beautiful and strikingly different from the cold-tolerant plants of today’s eastern Siberia. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find much about Kudia River in the scientific literature. I also think ginkgoes in particular are really interesting–today one species survives as the sole representative of an entire order which was once both more diverse and more widespread. Was it primarily climate change that led to the decline of the ginkgoes or did other factors come into play?

It’s a bonus that the Kudia River fossils were collected by one of my scientific heroes, T.D.A. Cockerell.

Looking at fossils from all over the world is way of traveling for me–both through space and time. One of my most profound experiences while traveling recently was seeing petrified redwood stumps in Iceland. While I knew that redwoods once grew all over the world, imagining the redwood forests of California while surrounded by the mossy volcanic highlands of modern Iceland really brought home to me how much the world has changed.

Photo: Wouter Hagens