Martha Crump was a biologist who studied the elusive golden toad extensively. They lived only in a four kilometer range in the Costa Rican hills, and spent almost all of their lives underground. However, once a year at the start of the wet season, the male toads would emerge and begin to sing for the females. It was described by Crump as a forest floor full of jewels; hundreds upon thousands of toads in a chorus of sound.
The 1980s saw a sharp decline in population. Whether it was human or climate driven is still unknown, but the mating pairs dwindled drastically. In 1988, Crump witnessed a singular male toad exit a burrow, climb onto a nearby rock, and begin it’s song. When the night was over, the toad descended back underground, alone. In 1989, Crump returned to the area, and again found the singular male. Again it climbed, sang it’s tiny song to a vast and empty jungle, and vanished back underground. It was the last ever sighting of the golden toad. Crump believed it was the same male from the year before.
The golden toad was declared extinct in the early 2000s. The story of the lone male toad helped usher in the species as a hallmark of modern conservation. It is gone, but not forgotten. May we do better with those that are left.
Epizephyrian Locris was one of the most important Southern Italian colonies of Ancient Greece. An active commercial centre in the Mediterranean, the city is also remembered for its landscape and for its flourishing culture, attested by archaeological evidence.
The many sacred areas, dedicated to Demeter, to Zeus the Thunderer, and the Casa dei Leoni (House of the Lions) with the sacellum dedicated to Aphrodite, offer a vivid image of the cults practiced by the inhabitants of Locri.
The National Archaeological Museum documents the productions of Locrian craftsmen with significant artefacts such as the pinakes (votive tablets), the terracotta offerings to the gods, the bronze mirrors and the tablets from the Archivio di Zeus Olimpio (Archive of Olympian Zeus).
Ceramic productions from different areas of the Greek and insular world are also exhibited, evidence of the intense commercial exchanges of Locri.
The exhibition is completed by architectural elements recovered from the buildings of the city.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, immediately outside the city walls, the archaelogist Paolo Orsi identifies the Persephoneion, a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Persephone, already mentioned by the historian Livy. The pinakes, small polychrome terracotta votive tablets offered by the faithful, which depict scenes linked to the myth of the goddess, come from this area.
The pinakes were manufactured by Locrian artisans during the first half of the fifth century BC, with the use of matrices (81 different ones were found), and decorated with vivid colours. Archaeologists have recovered and classified thousands, distinguishing them in ten groups according to the scene they depict.
Daily Kos user List maker NOT List taker thought of this Canadian editorial cartoon when I referred to the squatter in the White House as merkin von bankrupt :) Another tumblr user coined that nickname - one of these nights I’ve gotta back thru four years of tags and find and credit them!
Edited to add: It was jumpinjacktrash who coined it, but they’ve been inactive almost a year. tumblr’s flagging their non-adult-content posts, not even providing appeal buttons on some of them, and even deleting posts drove them - and a lot of other great users - away from tumblr.
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