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Your kids or grandkids' school might need volunteers to lead field trips and other activities in the science area.

We live on a planet of magnificent diversity and beauty. Dr. Fred Santana, Sarasota County's "bug man," says he just has to step outside his office to see something new to photograph. According to an inventory done some years ago by Florida's Department of Natural Resources, the state has 69 natural communities.

When I get discouraged, two people sustain me. One is William Bartram, the gentle Quaker botanist who traveled in Florida in the 1770s. In his Travels he rhapsodized about the plant and animal life, the gorgeous landscapes, and the native peoples. (He even inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote the poem "Kublai Khan" after reading Bartram's book.) "What a beautiful display of vegetation is before me! …seemingly unlimited in extent and variety.…", he wrote. This summer I saw it for myselfa lush hardwood hammock of oaks, Sweet Gum, Buttonwood, and huge Sabal Palms, beside the spring of the brilliant sapphire blue that so enraptured Bartram.

The other is Archie Carr, a Florida naturalist, professor, writer, and conservationist. His lovepassionfor these landscapes shines through in his essays. Optimistic about restoration, he wrote in an essay on the Suwannee River, " The biological landscape is to a degree self-healing…. The springs have been brutalized, but even they could be restored with careful tending."

Let us tend to our larger selves, Friends! It is never too late! •

Modern zoos—sanctuaries or spectacles?

Last year I told of our visit to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., to see Giant Pandas and other "charismatic magafauna." My article depicted zoos as sanctuaries, where the general public can be educated about endangered species and potentially be moved to support habit preservation and restoration programs.

However, a new book, Thought to Exist in the Wild, written by Derrick Jensen and illustrated with photographs by Karen Tweedy-Holmes (No Voice Unheard, Santa Cruz, Calif., 2007), challenges this common view by documenting the immense physical and mental suffering borne by capitive animals and exposing the distorted view of humans' relationship to the natural world that even the most benign and enlightened zoos tend to promote.

Its many poignant photographs of dispirited animals in confinement are offered as a mirror to a culture that is ignorantly and arrogantly destroying the beautiful and fragile community of life. "In part this is because...we experience the world according to ... the way we have been taught to perceive it," the authors say. "If we are to have any chance of survival we need to change how we perceive the world."—LC