Nabokov's Butterflies
A lepidopterist’s passion for Pugs, Satyrs, and Blues
His eye for detail and towering intellect led giants in the field to crave his approval
He fell for the Magdalena Alpine, the world’s only all-black butterfly
He wrote great novels, too
At the breakfast table recently, my partner Florence was reading the parlor game known as "The Proust Questionnaire." She put one of Proust's questions to me: "What is your idea of perfect happiness?" What came to mind was Nabokov's reply to Simona Moroni in a 1972 interview in Vogue: "What is the perfect walk for you?" asked Moroni. Nabokov replied, "Any first walk in any new place — especially a place where no lepidopterist has been before me. There still exist unexplored mountains in Europe and I can still walk 20 kilometers a day. The ordinary stroller might feel on sauntering out a twinge of pleasure, but the cold of the metal netstick in my right hand magnifies the pleasure to almost intolerable bliss."
That Vladimir Nabokov was deeply enamored of butterflies and moths comes as news to almost no one who even knows his name, though many misconstrue this attraction as somehow symbolic, …
Metamorphosis
A frog pond, filled with little frogs.
Frogs exist, whether we hear them or not.
Humans have to learn how to be human.
By the time this paper arrives in mailboxes and stores, people in some parts of the country may have begun to hear the chorus of frogs that assures us that spring is coming. But most places will still be deep in winter. The frogs know this, and they have nothing to say. Not yet.
Fast forward a few months, though, past the thawing of the ponds and the outpourings of lusty frog song, which can be deafening to those who wander close, and past the equally prolific extrusions of eggs out of frogs and into ponds — fast forward past all of that to the moment when those eggs have hatched.
Now. Imagine a pond in the middle of spring and the middle of the country teeming with life, roiling below the surface with little black jobs zipping to and fro. They seem to be made up of nothing but big heads and slim, powerful tails. Tadpoles. Pollywogs, if you will. Or, if you are in Honduras and trying to fit in, …
A Paiute Meeting in Big Pine
A legacy of lies, dust, and poisoned minds
The City of Los Angeles stole their water
Theft breeds mistrust
After 15 minutes pass, the doors to the Alan Spoonhunter Memorial Gymnasium remain closed. The crowd begins to mutter. No one has a key. Near the front of the assembly, Shannon of the Woods clears her throat.
“There’s no one here,” she announces, “and the meeting began 15 minutes ago. If no one opens these doors, we won’t be able to hold council.”
“That’s what they want!”
“Right. So we’ll hold it out here. I’ve got nowhere to be.”
A couple people glance at the sky.
“It’s supposed to rain,” croaks an old woman.
“Doesn’t look like it to me,” says Shannon.
At this moment, Jacklyn Bryan, Tribal Administrator for the Big Pine Paiute Tribe of Central California — irrigators of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and cousins to the Shoshone — appears in a silk shirt embroidered with flowers. The Paiutes go silent. She looks at the doors and looks at the sky. She stares off at …
