Thomas Newman
MHC 200
9-23-15

To spend one of my remaining lazy summer evenings caching bugs on Staten Island was not something I necessarily looked forward to. That being said, however, I did enjoy myself, and I gained a greater appreciation for what field biologists do in their line of work. To think that great discoveries can be made, and in some cases have to be made, wading through tall grass and hopscotching on dirt paths is a firm reminder of the grit required to obtain glory and progress. I’m not going to lie either, as I was out there swatting my net trying to catch fruit flies I couldn’t see, I imagined myself as Darwin studying his birds in the Galapagos. It was a very pleasant experience, and an educational one, although perhaps I wish I was assigned to study a somewhat more exciting creature and not the fruit fly, even if I’m sure it is a very important field of study.
Freshkills Park was beautiful, and a good example of how human beings can turn their fields of trash into fields of grass and brush with just a little innovation and thought. Just seeing the park gave me hope for our future because it showed me that there are plenty of people out there with the willpower and the know-how to preserve our planet and keep environments both habitable by all forms of life, and pristine even if they can’t claim to be in their natural state anymore. Learning about how the park was created in class only enhanced my memory of the experience. How mounds of garbage were encased in clay, covered in dirt, and once again plants were allowed to grow under the sun. It seems to me a simple solution to one of our many waste problems; however, to any privately owned landfill it probably appears to be an unnecessary expense. But I am strongly of the opinion that Freshkills should be the norm, and the not the exception, and if that means the nationalization of the waste industry then so be it.
Enough about politics, and now back to Bioblitz. It’s always nice to reconvene with Macaulay students from other campuses and learn about how their time at school is going, especially in an atmosphere of cooperation and education. Talking to strangers, albeit ones with plenty of commonalities in terms of experience, while netting and inspecting flies was an unorthodox way to bond and share thoughts about how we can both improve ourselves and our education. Hearing about how the fly is the creature responsible for the most human casualties was astounding, and blindingly obvious in hindsight. You just don’t expect such a tiny organism to be so deadly, but when you think about their numbers and the diseases they carry, it becomes increasingly clear as to why research needs to be done about them. And for such a common animal to have comparatively little known about them was eye opening, and a reminder of how little we understand the natural world. Really, all we know about the natural world concerns us in some way, and we need to break free of that chain. We need to start learning for the sake of knowing, and not just for the sake of bettering our own species.
Above all else, Bioblitz was an introduction into the world of the sciences for me. As an English major, I have fallen out of touch with the natural sciences, and doing research out in the field about the anatomy of the fly was a nice reunion with biology. I just wish Freshkills wasn’t on Staten Island.