Eat your heart out, Henry David Thoreau. According to the Illinois Natural History Survey “Reports” (Autumn), on June 29 and 30, more than 160 scientists participated in a “biodiversity blitz” at the Robert Allerton Park, which is west of Champaign-Urbana. Among other things, they were seeking “to break the temperate zone blitz record for species found in 24 hours, 1,905 species found at Walden Pond in 1998.” Final numbers from Allerton Park are not in, but the tentative count is more than 2,000 species.
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“We are now the largest harbor system in the country,” Chicago Park District superintendent David Doig tells the Trust for Public Land in an interview posted on the group’s Web site. “We have over 5,000 slips. We passed Long Beach last summer. We added a new harbor, DuSable Harbor, which added about 500 new slips….The day that we announced DuSable was the day the Tribune headline was ‘O’Hare loses first place as busiest airport.’ We may not be the busiest airport, but we have the largest harbor system.”
It’s virtually certain people will keep on pressing the flesh, given that even the Online News Association deemed it necessary to gather in a single physical place–Berkeley, California–last month for its second annual conference and awards banquet (“OJR Newsletter,” October 21).
In a sentence. The October 19 “Window to Africa Radio eNewsletter” quotes this Igbo proverb from Nigeria: “He who tries to live without risk will be killed by a falling dried leaf.”
