#EnvHist Worth Reading: November 2024

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Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can read all of our past #EnvHist Worth Reading lists right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from November 2024:

1. The Lizard King of Long Island

In this article for The New Yorker, Ben Goldfarb weaves an absolutely fascinating invasive species tale. For about a decade, Goldfarb has been involved in a group of people noting the presence of Italian wall lizards in New York City and points north, and this spring he received an email that shed light on the origins of this invasive population. Rachel Sperling wrote to Goldfarb that her father, Jon Sperling, a biology professor, was responsible for much of the lizard’s spread. Personally fond of the species and working under the assumption that they would do little harm to the native ecology because there are few lizards naturally found in the region, Sperling spent years releasing these lizards into the city. Situating Sperling into broader conversations around invasive species, Goldfarb provides an engaging look into the life of this eccentric human, showing the power of individual agency on ecological systems.

2. Cultures of Tarhana: A Tale of Humans and Microbes

Tarhana, a fermented soup base from the Middle East and Balkans, is more than a “poor man’s soup,” Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova demonstrates in this Springs article; it encapsulates generations of culinary skills, microbial cultures, and cultural heritage. Its production involves a coevolutionary process where humans and microbes interact, showing the continued relevance of longue durée framings in environmental history. Tarhana’s fermentation, akin to sourdough bread, relies on wheat, yogurt, and microbial starters, including previous batches, creating its distinctive sour flavor. The dough undergoes a week-long fermentation, followed by a two-week drying stage, making it a long-lasting, nutritious provision, ideal for nomadic communities. “It is … fascinating to consider how fermentation practices, such as making tarhana, not only influence the microbes involved but also inform the microbes’ evolutionary selection,” Sirakova writes.

3. The 80-Year Tunnel at Billy Bishop Airport

In this new digital exhibit for Heritage Toronto, Shannon Buskermolen delves into the history behind the underwater tunnel that connects Toronto’s mainland with the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport located on the Toronto Islands and why it took eighty years for this tunnel to be completed. Buskermolen notes that access to the Toronto Islands has been a long-time concern, beginning in the nineteenth century when the islands became a playground for city’s burgeoning urban population. An airport was initially proposed on the islands in 1929 and calls for a tunnel to the islands began at the same time. Buskermolen shares the history of failed tunnel designs and the endless municipal and provincial debates that delayed tunnel construction. Tunnel construction did not actually begin until 2012 and was finished in 2015.

4. ‘Climate Spiral’ Shows Warming Reaching New Extremes

This “climate spiral” video is a short and simple, but effective, digital visualization of warming temperatures since the 1880s. The end vertical spiral shows the record-breaking heat of the this year and the past several years, indicating that current climate conditions are most-definitely abnormal.

5. Orcas start wearing dead salmon hats again after ditching the trend for 37 years

Orcas have had an eventful 2024. Or at least, they have had quite the year in the eyes of humans. While apparent yacht “attacks” are easily swept into anthropocentric narratives of capitalist revolt, the recent sighting of orcas wearing salmons as “hats” fits less easily into a human-derived narrative. The fact that this behaviour has not been observed by humans since the 1980s makes this news story even more whimsical, inviting us to dream of orcas’ own histories and cultural trends.

Feature Image: “Two kinds of tarhana” by Badseed is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Jessica DeWitt

is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, project manager, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). She is the Managing Editor for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. She is also President of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, a Girls Rock Saskatoon board member, and a Coordinating Team member of Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon-Treaty Six. A passionate social justice advocate, she focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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