July 2009
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Rösel's bush-cricket
A cricket – along with grasshoppers, order Orthoptera – came back with me from the Essex countryside this weekend. I identified it as a female Rösel’s bush-cricket long winged form or Metrioptera roeselii f. diluta from the sub-family Decticinae, which includes wartbiters, bog bush-crickets and grey bush-crickets.
Click on the link (right) to hear its song.
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Rösel’s bush-cricket’s song. The...
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August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof
Rösel’s bush-cricket was first identified by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, a German entomologist. Here’s his original description of wartbiters, decticus verrucivorus:
Because these animals are so ill-natured, you really have to take care when you want to catch them. They tend to bite so sharply after finding thin skin that immediately blood is drawn. At the same time a brown...
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Adriaen Coenen (1515-1587), a Dutchman, wrote and illustrated a book on whales ‘and other rare big strange fishes’ (‘end andere selseme grote wonderlycke vischen’). Coenen was the son of a fisherman and often saw whales, porpoises and dolphins washed up on the shores of Holland.
Article © Julian Lass 2009
‘In the year of Our Lord 1577, on the day of 2 July, a...
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La belle dame sans merci
I meet you – one moonlit night – full beautiful, a faery’s child, with long hair and light feet, though your eyes are wild and we dance together, slowly, shy hands searching soft, warm crevices, and I shut your wild wild eyes with kisses four until light is streaming in and your face starts melting. The space you filled is almost empty – I know you were here but the familiar is fading. Yet though...
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The Man from Del Monte and the climate
How climate change and Del Monte ads link up is curious. The ads have not been running since the 90s, well before climate change was an international agenda. In this ad, left, the very oranges in the trees jump for joy as darker-skinned serfs rejoice in their white lord’s vagary instead of demanding an end to their serfdom. A somewhat retroactive ideology that blurs present exploitation. All...
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Twitter and Iran
Protestors in Iran are using Facebook an Twitter to ensure that news of their demonstrations and brutal repression reach the outside world.
Article © Julian Lass 2009 (originally published in theBritish Journal of Photography, 01.07.2009)
As Iran faces mass protest and political turmoil, those rallying for reform have struggled to be heard through media channels, virtually silenced by...
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Essex
I fix another shelf and watch you get quarrelsome with my bellicose DIY You want to go to out (to Graffham – in Sussex?) I suggest Essex, it’s closer. High on tea and make-up we made love until I get a nosebleed, (you sucked me off while I bled like a wounded solider) We drove past rows of soiled semis, squalid remainders of your Essex infancy standing like archers at the ready threatening to...