April 1, 2025
Spring Caring
Habitat loss is the biggest factor behind species extinction. Here are a few easy actions you can take this spring and summer to help mitigate this. Most of the actions on this list should be fun for you, too:
- Visit a park or nature preserve: Parks and nature preserves are one of the most effective, long-term ways of maintaining large swathes of habitat. We can support them by visiting and appreciating them. This can also be a great way to support yourself. Taking a walk in nature can be calming — it certainly helps me shut off the voices of anxiety in my head. Of course, this is something to do when there isn’t a constant spitting of frozen substances out of the sky like what’s happening while I’m writing this.
- Plant native flowers for pollinators: If you have a place to make a garden, consider filling it with native plants that attract pollinators. Things like monarda, wild geranium, columbine, and milkweed are all spring flowers that can help support pollinators. Milkweed is extremely important for monarch butterflies because it is the only food source for monarch caterpillars. If you have space for this, plant some of these and let them go a bit wild.
- Pick up litter: This may be less fun than the other items on this list, but it’s probably the easiest. If you’re outside and you see a piece of litter, pick it up. Habitat degradation is part of habitat loss. For instance, a normal plastic bottle for water or soda takes around 450 years to decompose. So, a plastic bottle that isn’t disposed of properly has centuries to harm habitats by leaching chemicals, being ingested by animals, and damaging plants. So picking up litter is important and an easy accompaniment to spring walks.
- Buy sustainably sourced chocolate: This can literally be any product. I chose chocolate because even though we’ve just finished spring break, we’re coming to the end of the semester, and there are going to be some stressful moments. Chocolate is a comfort food for me. Unfortunately, some cocoa farms destroy rainforests to create farmland. Buying from companies that don’t do this is a simple way to help protect rainforest habitats. Look for Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, and World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) logos on the packaging. These all indicate that the products they appear on are more sustainably sourced than other similar products without these logos. Again, this isn’t just chocolate, if that’s not your comfort go–to. Chocolate can be a good starting point if you want to think about buying food that has less of an impact on the environment.
Helping to protect the environment doesn’t always have to be hard. Sometimes it can even be fun.
—Neesa Peak, Eco-Actions Editor
Missed the chance to get into this year’s Northern Lights? We’ve extended our deadline!
In July of 2024, Professor Rebecca Nesvet published James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family, which explores how Rymer’s stories reflected and shaped ideas about what family life meant during the Victorian period. James Malcolm Rymer authored short stories that produced characters such as Sweeney Todd and Varney the Vampyre. Although referred to as “penny bloods” and “dreadfuls” due to their graphic nature, these stories, Dr. Nesvet’s text argues, were written to reflect the working class of Britain and to advocate for patriarchal family values in response to the changes in British society. Dr. Nesvet examines these works through multiple lenses, revealing the connection between Victorian penny fiction’s sensational themes and its underlying focus on family values.
We was first published in 1924. The author, Eugene Zamiatin, was a Russian citizen during the Russian Revolution. While he supported the equality aimed for in the Bolshevik Revolution and worked towards its realization, he disagreed with the censorship imposed on writers after the new government was in place. He requested permission to leave Russia so that he could write without censorship. But outside of Russia, he lost touch with his homeland and, with it, his primary source of inspiration. Because of this, We is his only major work. Some critics thought its portrayal of a technologically advanced Russia was too much of a stretch, considering how technologically unadvanced Russia was when the book was published. We has gained traction over the years and helped to inspire 1984 by George Orwell.We is generally considered a utopian novel, as it depicts a perfectly regulated society that has eliminated virtually all suffering. Citizens, known as numbers instead of people, are equal; there is no poverty or racism. Even jealousy has been eliminated — marriage and romantic relationships don’t exist, and sex is regulated by the government. But for me, because the society depicted in We eliminates so many things that make life good, it cannot be anything other than a dystopian novel. There are no families, no privacy, no proper literature or music or access to nature. Even the very ability to imagine comes under threat.
Centuries after the collapse of Earth, human survivors live in an artificial paradise called Eden. To preserve what little resources they have and to keep humanity alive, the government creates a law allowing each family in Eden to have only one child. But what happens in a hidden case of twins?
The Princess and the Goblin (1991) is my forever favorite animated film from childhood. In all honesty, I always thought this would be a movie I’d gatekeep ‘til the day I die. I should’ve known I wouldn’t hold true to that, considering I never shut up about the film and that I own a back-up VHS for my original VHS copy of this movie … if that says anything. It has a pretty princess named Irene (Sally Ann Marsh), her love interest Curdie (Peter Murray) — who’s the son of a miner — a literal scaredy cat named Turnip, and goblins who wish to kill the “sun-people” (humans). What more could one ask for?
“So, he left the path for a shortcut across a field and the moon went with him.” With words so magically written, I had no other choice but to sit down and read the book and watch the movie from which they came.
Although we are entering spring, and it is nowhere near Christmas time, the animated movie that I want to give a shout out to is Klaus. Released in 2019, this movie gives a fun twist on Santa Claus’ origin, creating a new story that’s far from any previous existing folklore. We follow the main character Jesper, who has grown up in the comfort and wealth of his father’s mail company. Because he knows his son is purposefully slacking off in his postal training with the intention of living off his family’s fortune, Jesper’s father gives him an ultimatum: take a job on a remote island and successfully mail 6,000 letters, or be cut off from the family wealth. Reluctantly, Jesper goes to the island, where he meets the unwelcoming townsfolk of Smeerenburg. While originally just sent out to learn more about being a responsible worker, Jesper ends up finding much more through friendship and a community that he unintentionally fosters.
Sitting down after a long day of work, kicking your feet up, and cozying in to watch your favorite guilty pleasure show may arguably be one of the best feelings in the world. Perhaps the guiltiest pleasure of them all is reality shows. The competition, challenges, silliness, and most importantly, drama of these shows are what draws you in and keeps you watching every week, even when you can feel your brain cells die a little more with each episode. The epitome of reality TV has to be those in The Bachelor franchise. The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are shows that somewhat glorify cheating for a target audience that would go berserk if cheated on. Between the two shows, we get so much pettiness, heartbreak, and, of course, love. These two shows give us all the drama we could want — or do they?Bachelor in Paradise is a spin-off of the series we already know and hate to admit that we love. It brings all the emotion, conflict, and general stupidity of the original shows, but this time on a beach. The other big difference is the cast. Rather than having one bachelor/ette dating multiple people who are only there for them, there are an even number of guys and girls, and it is a bit of a free-for-all. The best part: all of the people in the mansion are former cast members. Paradise gives you a chance to see more of the people you love as well as the ones you love to hate. Each week, new people enter the mansion to shake things up, and whoever does not end up in a couple by the end of the week has to leave and go back to their boring single life. This show has become a staple in “Bachelor Nation” and is highly anticipated by fans every year. If you need a show that provides some great drama that you can witness but not be in the middle of, this show is a great option and is worth waiting for every week.