Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

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As a married couple, you have probably grown to rely on the income of both spouses to create a budget and stability for your family. This book is amazingly informative and well written. Flyn travels the world to see first hand, places that have been abandoned by humans. In the process the reader gets to mull over the potential for continued life on earth and reflect on ways to put the brakes on destruction. She makes it clear that we are in serious trouble, but all of her visits show some degree of natural regeneration, even places as hopeless as Chernobyl or Bikini Atoll. This will be compounded by the fact that you’ll have a lot more responsibilities heaped upon you. You’ll take on roles that your spouse may have handled in the past. You’ll have to be a mother and a father to your children. And you’ll be the one who has to explain the circumstances of the abandonment to them.

Abandonment is also characterized in legal circles by a set amount of time that a spouse does not meet their marital obligations. In some states, this duration is one year, but laws can vary from state to state. Then, as the economy grew, the rubbish piled up. By the early 2000s, it had become a major problem. Thanks to other readers here on Goodreads, I have read yet another fascinating book, this one on the natural world’s transformation of human induced “wastelands” from Verdun to Detroit to Chernobyl. As a species we often seem driven to the destruction of ourselves and the world that we inhabit, and Cal Flynn carefully observes and generously reports on the journey of life when we don’t interfere after we have wreaked havoc. This isn't just wishful thinking, he says, but grounded in the improvements he's seen in Tonga's waste management over the past 20 years.If you have ever wondered what your home, your town, your county would look like if humans abandoned it for a decade or three, this is the book for you. Some, like Chernobyl in Ukraine or No-Man's Land in Cyprus, were evacuated hastily without much warning. Others, like a variety of industrial wastelands that she visits, were not so much evacuated as left behind, as the reasons why people had ever been there disappeared, and the unhealthy waste they had left behind made it unlikely to be converted to any other use (a similar example is the Zone Rouge, Verdun, France, still polluted with explosives and the remnants of toxic gas canisters from World War One). A third category have not quite been abandoned, but their human population is so reduced, in numbers and prosperity, that nonetheless it is reverting in some ways to a state of wildness: parts of Detroit, Michigan and Paterson, New Jersey. Devon Warner and his daughter Che Niesha work on the roof of a home in Codrington, Barbuda. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Eli Fuller, an Antiguan businessman who runs a boat tour company, says some of the blame for the delays has to be shouldered by Barbudans themselves. “They’re not going over to clean their own homes,” says Fuller. “It’s their culture from birth that everything is done for them. I don’t know how Antigua is going to get them out of the shelters.” Where she goes a little astray, in my opinion, is in making a bit too much of nature's ability to heal the planet's woes, at one point suggesting that all that may be required for curing global warming is the regeneration of forests on a large enough scale. Well, yes, as long as we also stipulate the extinction of the human race. Far be it from me to discourage the planting of trees (I've planted literally thousands in the last thirty years), but the math says tree planting alone is not enough. Though perhaps Ms. Flyn is hinting at, if not extinction, then a massive collapse of human populations; certainly she sounds that way at times. The other area where I must differ with her is regarding invasive plants where she vaguely argues, in the case of Amani, that butterflies like lantana, and maybe invasive plants will be a net benefit in ways we don't understand. Again, the science on this is clear; to insects, a non-native plant usually looks like an inhospitable desert that offers them no food. Maybe we can't do anything about the invasives that are here already (though many groups work to eradicate them) but people should not plant non-native species. To do this, it has received funding from Japan to build a scrap vehicle recycling centre, due to open later this year. Although the fame of the song means that it is one of the few things popularly associated with the island and it is evocative of island life, it was never sung by its residents, having been composed long after the evacuation.We're seeing a huge increase of waste that's being generated from residential households," he says. Time, after all, is the great healer. The question is: 'How long does it need?' Then: 'How long have we got'" Criminal abandonment takes place when one person stops providing for the care, support, and protection of a spouse who has health problems or minor children without “just cause.”

Suppose your spouse is abusive to you, has committed adultery, or has a chronic substance addiction problem. If you left you could claim constructive abandonment because you were forced to leave your home due to the other spouses’ misconduct. By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone? Eerie Elements: Mostly forgotten out in the East River in close proximity to the Bronx, North Brother Islandserved most infamously as a quarantine hospital, whose patients included the notorious Typhoid Mary. And what is more unnerving than hospital ruins on an island directly visible from one of the most populous cities in the world? From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery. By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we're gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone? More praise for Islands of Abandonment 'Extraordinary ... There’s a fascinating chapter on large-scale reforestation in the northern hemisphere. Another section of the book looks at urban decline, mainly focused on Detroit which has seen a huge fall in population since its heyday and where entire areas of the city have been demolished. I daresay Americans might be more familiar with this than I was.

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But this book surprised me. It showed me how little we (or at least I) know about life. It reminded me how resilient life is. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. If you are the remaining parent, as soon as the appropriate time frame has passed to claim abandonment, you should file for primary physical and legal custody. Now is the time to also file for child support if you haven’t already done so. In cases where you can’t find the other parent, this can be a hollow victory, but you should do it anyway. You never know when the abandoning spouse will return, and you want to be prepared when they do. This is but a glimpse. Cal Flyn has chosen to go where most scientists and scientific journalists like she is writing on the topic don't. Her writing is sometimes lyrical and literary. She takes the reader around the world putting the focus on areas that have shown amazing resilience in the face of man's poisons, weapons, waste and introduction of invasive species as well as volcanoes.

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The Kingdom of Tonga looks like paradise, but its lush coconut palms nurse a hidden problem that threatens the health of its people. Other songs composed by or about residents of the island survive. These include "Oran do dh'Eilean Mhiulaidh" (Song to the Isle of Mingulay) written by Neil MacPhee the Vatersay raider (see above), after the abandonment of the island, and "Turas Neill a Mhiughlaigh" (Neil's Trip to Mingulay) written by Father Allan MacLean (known locally as the "Curate of Spain" having attended the Scots College in Valladolid), possibly during the period 1837–40 when he lived on Barra. [4] Songs and oral tradition relating to Mingulay are discussed in Liza Storey's Muinntir Mhiughalaigh (2008).