FALL 2014 – All Our Relations

September 28, 2014.Reading time 1 minute.

My essay entitled “All Our Relations” is one of two non-fiction essays in the Bellevue Literary Review issue devoted to Our Fragile Environment. “In university I was taught to scientifically classify organisms within the Tree of Life, dividing them into Kingdom, Phyla, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. A series of evolutionary events leading to us, […]

FALL 2014 – SJSU Students & Collaborative Group Projects

August 18, 2014.Reading time less than 1 minute.

In our AMS/ENVS/HUM 159 Nature & World Cultures class, students complete a group project together with a Native Californian tribe, resulting in a micro-documentary, a published article, or a Wikipedia entry. You can view some of the micro-docs on my DrPfeiffer YouTube channel. We also just co-authored an article about this in the international journal […]

SUMMER 2014 – Protecting the Clear Lake Hitch

August 10, 2014.Reading time less than 1 minute.

On August 6th, 2014 the California Fish & Game Commission vote unanimously to designate the Clear Lake Hitch (Lavinia exilicauda chi), an endemic minnow of cultural and ecological significance, as a threatened species in California. Conservationists from the Center for Biological Diversity filed the initial petition. Volunteers with the Chi Council for the Clear Lake […]

SUMMER 2014 – Digital Storytelling

July 10, 2014.Reading time less than 1 minute.

After attending the Bread Loaf -Orion Environmental Writer’s Conference (Middlebury, VT), and then a “flipped classroom” workshop at the National Center for Case Study Teaching in the Sciences (SUNY-Buffalo), I ended up at the Fishtrap Writer’s Conference at Wallowa Lake, Oregon. Where I finished this three-minute poem-film.

SPRING 2014 – A taste of my upcoming book!

May 13, 2014.Reading time 1 minute.

The first excerpt to be published from my forthcoming book, The Language of Endangered Hearts, appears in the inaugural issue of Between the Lines, the new literary journal from Holy Names University in Oakland. The story, “Yes,” recounts a consultancy visit to Sumba Island, eastern Indonesia, where I clashed horns with a shrill-voiced propinsi pipsqueak: […]