Last night, Tex and I took a field trip to Mary Cummings park where we hoped to see and hear woodcocks doing their spring thing. There, at dusk, in a large field next to a horrible parking structure, we heard the PEENTS and saw a few of the birds rising up in their mating display. It was wonderful! And all because back in 1925, Mary Cummings made clear in her will that all her land would be “to hold and keep the same forever open as a public pleasure ground, and to maintain and care for the same in a suitable manner in accordance with that purpose.” If she hadn’t, there would have been no field, no woodcocks, but probably a lot more horrible parking structures instead. The world over, people like Mary have had the foresight and generosity to make similar arrangements, which brings us to Katalpi Park, a nature sanctuary in Puerto Montt, Chile, another wonderful nature preserve.
“The Katalapi Park Research and Education Center is a private protected area,” reads the website, “created to support scientific research linked to the native forest and to teach children, youth, and adults to love, know and value nature. Katalapi Park is an initiative of the Corcuera Vliegenthart Family, owners and directors of the park since 1994. Since 2014, Katalapi Park is a Biological Station of University of Concepcion under the direction of botanist Dr. Alfredo Saldaña. A cooperation agreement has also been signed with University of La Frontera. Since 2017, the park is administered by the Katalapi Park Foundation.”
Parque Katalpi, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you Vliegenthart Family for your foresight and hard work, and thank you my dear old friend Samantha Sparks for your wise, creative guidance as the current E.D.! The world is a better place with Katalpi in it. And I hope to visit one day, perhaps for mushroom season…
I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter, love, and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.
At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life and pandemic prevent posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”) And…as I go through graduate school, I will post as I am able, Mabel.
The Total Femme 