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The widespread image of the polar bear and the threat of its extinction is perhaps the world’s most powerful image of climate change, but for at least one of the large environmentalist groups behind it, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), this image has become a dilemma. According to UN scientific assessments, the polar bear does not face extinction, and the common understanding that it does now stands in the way of more nuanced communication about climate change in the Arctic. “When the symbol gets bigger than the region itself and people don’t realize that the polar bear is...

White Double THE SAME YEAR in which St. Dominic, before making any project with regard to his sons, founded the first establishment of the Sisters of his Order, the companion destined for him by heaven received his mission from the Crucifix in the church of St. Damian, in these words: “Go, Francis, repair my house which is falling to ruin.” The new patriarch inaugurated his work, as Dominic had done, by preparing a dwelling for his future daughters, whose sacrifice might obtain every grace for the great Order he was about to found. The house of the Poor Ladies...

Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre-farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago -- one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland. Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old -- hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen. The midden -- a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish -- contained Stone Age implements, including two axes and a number of smaller stone tools... The midden was discovered by local woman Elaine O'Malley in 2009 and a major...

I just got done reading a book about the death of Henry R. Luce in 1967, which of course made me want to cry, asking why such people leave this time and place when their work on earth is hardly begun. It was very sad. Anyway. After Henry Luce handed over the reins of his publishing empire to others, in 1964, he and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century, sold their home in Connecticut and moved to Arizona. They probably should have remained in Connecticut, because Arizona seemed to have a...

Sorry I missed last week. So here's two, one from space, one from the ground, of Ireland's Burren. Source article for the first image: Burren Plateau, County Clare, Ireland Click for full-size (this is half-size): Clints and grikes OK, well, three then:

(Taken from the old Breviary) While the Mohammedans were besieging Assisi and trying to seize the monastery of St Clare, she desired, though sick, to be carried to the gate of the city, together with a vessel in which the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist was contained, and there she prayed: "Do not hand over to the beasts, O Lord, the souls confessing you, and guard your maid-servants, whom thou hast redeemed by thy Precious Blood!" At whose prayer, a great voice was heard: "I will always protect you!" Indeed part of the Musselmen betook themselves to flight while...

Alexandria, Va. -- Once upon a lifetime ago, Shelly Pennefather was the sweetest of shooting stars, an All-American at Villanova and the 1987 national player of the year. Since 1991, she has lived here, in the Poor Clare Monastery, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a very modest middle-class neighborhood. Pennefather has taken her vows and the name Sister Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels. She renounced her worldly life, including a six-figure salary as a professional basketball star in Japan, to answer her true calling: To serve God as a cloistered Poor Clare nun.