Fibs in NZ -- and climate change

     A few days ago, on August 21, it was Poet's Day in New Zealand and the blog sciencelens.com featured a math-poetry theme; that posting mentions the anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (for which Sarah Glaz and I are co-editors) and offers several Fibs, poems whose syllable-counts follow the first six non-zero Fibonacci numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, . . .., with each succeeding number the sum of the two preceding). 

Save the Climate, change STEM to STEAM

     Australian poet Erica Jolly is one of the leaders of the STEM to STEAM movement in Australia -- she has introduced me to The Conversation, and, in it, this interesting and relevant article, "Did Artists Lead the Way in Mathematics?"
     For many years a secondary school teacher in South Australia, Jolly has written Challenging the Divide:  Approaches to Science and Poetry (Lythrum Press, 2010) -- a book that is rich with citations and arguments for integrating the arts and the sciences -- and includes a variety of poems.  Also rich with math-science content is Jolly's poetry collection, Making a Stand (Wakefield Press, 2015).
     And here is one of Jolly's recent poems -- sent to me with this comment:   Here's a poem - it deals with numbers in my way. Someone can do the multiplication.   Best wishes  Erica

A Significant Cabinet Change by the Prime Minister
in this New Coalition Government                           by Erica Jolly

And reading “Lab Girl: A story of trees, science and love”
by Hope Jahren, published by Fleet, in the UK, 2016.
Professor Jahren was named in 2005 as one of the
“Brilliant 10” young scientists. Geobiology is
her area of study and she is now a tenured
Professor at the University of Hawai’i.   

Can poetry change the climate for frogs?

      Poems affect our spirits as well as our minds. And Split This Rock is looking for poems that protest and witness, world-changing poems.  Go here for information about their Eighth Annual Poetry Contest (with submission deadline November 1, 2014).
     Here in this blog, as I present connections between poetry and mathematics, I provide some poems of protest and advocacy.  I advocate attention to problems of climate change -- to keep our world habitable; I advocate full recognition of women in the sciences -- for a not dissimilar reason.  We must not waste our resources.

Storm Sandy -- and climate change

     That
     storm
     Sandy
     has caused more
     people to believe
     climate change is real and awful
     than the piles of statistics amassed by scientists --
     bad to worse since 1950  --
     ice caps melting, drought,
     sea levels
     rising.
     Oh,
     My!

This poem of mine, with its syllables counted by successive Fibonacci numbers, is a slight revision of one posted on 31 August 2012.  That earlier posting also links to climate change data and to other  FIBS.

Climate Concerns

      Ideas become internalized when we WRITE about them -- and I encourage students AND all of us to write about climate change and efforts to save our planet.  And then to act on our words!   Here are three small syllable-squares, first appearing in a post more than ten years ago and expressing my ongoing concerns for precarious imbalances we have created within our natural environment.

This link leads to several previous posts found using the search terms climate change.

Marching for Climate

     Today I want to call attention to the growing global concern about climate change accentuated by the United Nations Climate Summit that opens September 23. Tomorrow (September 21) I will travel on a 6 AM bus  from Silver Spring to NYC to be part of the People's Climate March.  It is said that more than 500 buses of protesters are heading to New York. 29 marching bands will provide the soundtrack. 26 city blocks are being cordoned off for the march's line-up.   At the same time, more than 2,000 People's Climate events are taking place in over 160 countries around the world—from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires and from New York to San Francisco.

     To have a small carbon footprint I will march tomorrow with only a small sign -- one that wears a 3x3-square reminder that dates back to a 1968 essay, "Tragedy of the Commons,"  by ecologist Garrett Hardin (1915-2003). 

       There  is  no
       place to throw
       that's  away.

WHY is it taking us so long to act to preserve a habitable planet?  Do we not care about the world we are leaving for our grandchildren?

2012 posts -- titles and links

Scroll down to find titles and dates of posts in 2012 -- and, at the bottom, links to posts all the way back through 2011 to March 2010 when this blog was begun.   This link leads to a PDF file that lists searchable topics and names of poets and mathematicians presented herein.

Dec 30  A chance encounter
Dec 28  Explorers
Dec 25  Support STREET SENSE
Dec 24  Star, shine bright!
Dec 21  Skating (with math) on Christmas 

Poetry-application of The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic

Destructive effects of human greed and neglect on the earth's natural environment are echoed hauntingly in the repetitions within "We Are the Final Ones" -- a dirge-like poem I've constructed using the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.  (For those unfamiliar with the theorem, brief explanation is included in paragraphs that follow the poem):

From a poetic artist -- "New Math"

     Neha Misra, one of my neighbors (in Eastern Village cohousing in Silver Spring, Maryland) is both a poet and a visual artist; in a recent conversation, I asked Neha if she had any mathy poems -- and she  volunteered the following lines-- full of rich mathematical terminology paired with multiple -- and thoughtful --  meanings.  Thank you, Neha!

New Math        by Neha Misra
 
Because I once scored 49 out of 50
in a Mathematical Physics exam
that I was so proud of, still am.
I do not remember much of
signs of sines and cosines.
I remember the differential equations
were all fine, but I was in love
with the curves of integration—
 
Because I once taught a scared young boy
in the confident body of a man
to not let his exponential fear of math
come in the way of his waking dreams
of flying with numbers.
Paper and pen in our hands,
together we melted his fear of math
into the heart of zero
and he flew     
far   far           far             away from me
on the infinite new wings of those numbers—  

Math and Poetry and Climate

Canadian poet Madhur Anand is also an Environmental Scientist; her love of nature and concerns for preserving a habitable climate pervade her work -- and she also scatters throughout it some mathematics.  You can imagine my delight when I found in her new collection (A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes) a poem (included below) that features the identity matrix.  Read on!

No Two Things Can Be More Equal    by Madhur Anand

In undergrad I learned about the identity 
matrix. Ones on the main diagonal and zeros 
elsewhere. Anything multiplied by it is itself. 

Worried about Climate Change

     When working with students in poetry workshops I often ask them to write to satisfy a constraint -- perhaps a Fib or a square poem -- in order to help them focus their thoughts.  This morning -- in the middle of a heat wave -- I focused my thoughts squarely on my growing concerns about climate.

       Steamy weather.  I count
       the degrees.  I count on
       air conditioning.  But
       my cooling system adds
       to global warming.  What
       is the right thing to do?

 Here is a link to previous postings in this blog that offer climate concerns.

Tomorrow is (or is not) Groundhog Day

     Last year my February 1 post anticipated Groundhog Day with a poem that mentioned the crop damage that groundhogs do by tunneling under a field and nibbling the roots of crops.  Today's post was provoked by an "Urban Jungle" item concerning groundhogs in Tuesday's Washington Post. 
     When I was growing up (on a farm near Indiana, Pennsylvania) Punxutawney Phil was merely a local celebrity.  But the TODAY show and Bill Murray's 1993 film (showing at AFI in Silver Spring tomorrow evening) changed all that.  Here, in syllable-square stanzas -- based on the legend and recent climate change developments -- are several groundhog-day comments:

       Today's myth
       passes, the
       world moves on.

Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .

      My first posting in this blog was nearly eight years ago (on March 23, 2010).  If, at the time, I had anticipated its duration, I should have made a plan for organizing the posts.  But my ambitions were small.  During the time I was teaching mathematics at Bloomsburg University, I gathered poetry (and various historical materials) for assigned readings to enrich the students' course experiences. After my retirement, I had time to want to share these materials -- others were doing well at making historical material accessible to students but I thought poetry linked to mathematics needed to be shared more.  And so, with my posting of a poem I had written long ago celebrating the mathematical life of Emmy Noether, this blog began.  Particular topics featured often in postings include -- verse that celebrate women, verses that speak out against discrimination, verses that worry about climate change.   

You're invited to:
Scroll through the titles below, browsing to find items of interest
among the more-than-nine-hundred postings since March 2010
OR 
Click on any label -- a list is found in the right-hand column below the author profile 
OR
Enter term(s) in the SEARCH box -- and find all posts containing those terms.

 For example, here is a link to the results of a SEARCH using    math women 

And here is a link to a poem by Brian McCabe that celebrates math-woman Sophie Germain.
This link reaches a poem by Joan Cannon that laments her math-anxiety.
This poem expresses some of my own divided feelings.

                                       2017 Posts

350: Science --> Poetry --> Music

350 parts per million is the "safe upper limit" for CO₂ in our atmosphere presented by NASA scientist Jim Hansen in December 2007 and widely agreed upon.  From that number 350.org .was born. On October 24, 2009, 350 Poems celebrated an international day of climate action with a posting, from poets all around the world, of 350 poems of 3.5 lines each --  each responding to concern for man-made climate change. 

EARTH DAY -- what are ways to preserve our planet?

Save
our
Mother
Earth -- conserve 
our resources, shift 
to non-polluting substances.

As many of you readers know, the poem above is an example of  a FIB -- a six-line poem with syllable-counts matching the first six Fibonacci numbers,  When I sit down to write about a particular topic, I often find the the FIB format is a good way to start -- developing an idea starting with single words and gradually developing longer phrases.   And, today, outside of this blog, I am trying to learn more about earth friendly substances.

If you have time to be interested in more mathy and earth-friendly poems, this link leads to the results of a blog search for climate change and this second link leads to previous Earth Day blog postings.

 This link leads to postings -- and poems -- in this blog related to CLIMATE.

And here is a link to several previous EARTH DAY postings..

Tragedy of the Commons

Thinking in syllable-squares,
recalling ecologist Garrett Hardin (1915-2003)
and his 1968 wisdom, "Tragedy of the Commons."

Maximum               
may not be                   
optimum.

Once upon a time, 350 was our goal

     Back in 2007, 350 parts per million was the "safe upper limit" for CO₂ in our atmosphere -- a figure  presented by NASA scientist Jim Hansen in December 2007 and widely agreed upon.  From that number the website 350.org was born. On October 24, 2009, 350 Poems celebrated an international day of climate action with a posting, from poets all around the world, of 350 poems of 3.5 lines each --  each responding to concern for man-made climate change.   My own entry (#265 here in the listing) I offer below.
    It's sad news that recent data (more than 400 ppm of CO₂ in our atmosphere) verifies our greedy disregard of this important warning.  What can we do?

    The Spider     (265/350)        by JoAnne Growney

     Spinner of intricate, twenty-inch silk food snares.
     Twenty inches — not fifty or two hundred.
     She knows the limits to her senses.  Humans
     keep building bigger webs.

This 3.5 line poem was first posted almost ten years ago (here at this link). 

How many grains of sand?

     Sand beaches are places I love to walk.  Next to oceans and soft underfoot. 

Below I post a stanza from Richard Bready's "Times of Sand"  --

 a long poem that explores many of the numbers related to sand. 

     Contemplating grains of sand turns my thoughts to the pair of terms "finite" and "infinite."  One of my friends, university-educated, versed in literature and philosophy, offered "all of the grains of sand" as an example of an infinite set.   As we talked further, he proposed "the stars in the universe" as a second example. This guy, like many, equates "infinite" with "too large to count."  And then there is me; long ago in college I encountered a definition of "infinite" that went something like this:  A set is infinite if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the members of the given set  or one of its proper subsets with the set {1, 2, 3, . . ..} of counting numbers.

Poems with Numbers

      Hats off to the organizers and presenters at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival held in DC this past weekend.  Great poets, great programs, fantastically good company all around!!!

      Saturday at the festival,  Denny Shaw and I led a panel-workshop, "Counting On," in which we encouraged poets to use numbers to illuminate their poems of witness and protest.  Our samples of vivid effects of numbers included:  "At Arlington" by Wiley Clements, "The Idea of Ancestry" by Etheridge Knight, "Numbers for the Week" by Joan Mazza, “On Ibrahim Balaban’s Painting ‘The Prison Gates’” by Nazim Hikmet, “The Stalin Epigram” by Osip Mandlestam, “Bosnia, Bosnia” by June Jordan, “The Terrorist:  He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska, and “Four Five Six” by Rosemary Winslow.

     Poetry from our workshop participants will be posted here when it is gathered.  We focused on humanitarian and political concerns -- and used our workshop writing times to try for  poems that use numbers in their imagery.  Here are two samples from me (both syllable-squares).

     Our jails hold

     5 times more 

     blacks than whites.

50 years after "The Population Bomb"

          In 1968 while I was in graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, we all were talking about Paul Erlich's new book, The Population Bomb, and its dire predictions.  My worry over population has evolved into worry about climate change -- a deep concern that selfish actions today are leaving an unhealthy world for future generations.  I want my grandchildren to have the opportunity for healthy lives!!!   On the morning of January 3,  the program 1A on  radio station WAMU did a thought-provoking feature, "More People, More Problems"  on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Erlich's book.  And, at a website entitled "Better (not bigger) Vermont"  I found several poems and songs about population, including the "Population Pressure Song" by Calvin Stewart & Joice Marie -- I offer several stanzas below:

from  Population Pressure Song   by Calvin Stewart & Joice Marie (©2008)
     . . .
        Pop pop, goes the population
        Got to stop, the population
        While we still have our woods
        In our quiet neighborhoods