![\"leonard_cohen_2008\"](\"https:\/\/escsecblog.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/11\/leonard_cohen_2008.jpg\")
By Rama – Commons file, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=53046764<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Last winter, I spent a few months working on insect identifications for the BC Conservation Data Centre<\/a>, mostly collections of insects made at newly-acquired conservation lands in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions of BC.<\/p>\n As I had no laboratory of my own, and no reference collections to work with, I\u00a0was working out of the ROM, back behind Antonia Guidotti’s office in the entomology workroom. This place, in midwinter, is usually a little lonely, as Antonia has a lot of work to do all around the collection. And so mostly in solitude,\u00a0I would sit there at my microscope, \u00a0stumbling through insect IDs, learning what I could about a vast array of taxa, and listening to an inordinate amount of Leonard Cohen’s music.<\/p>\n Somehow, I feel the mood of Leonard Cohen’s later works lends itself so well to solitary entomology pursuits. The consummate outsider, looking closely and inwardly at the human condition, and yet always so aware of a wider world, Leonard’s music\u00a0has many parallels to sitting at a scope, baffled by Nature’s \u00a0diversity and wondering how it all fits together.<\/p>\n (As an aside, when I was going through scads of unfortunate, dead, trapped insects, the song \u00ab\u00a0Who by Fire<\/a>\u00a0\u00bb seemed morbidly appropriate)<\/p>\n Occasionally, from the lab bench, I would reach out to the other folks online, sharing my discoveries through Twitter (the entomology workroom has a modest wireless connection!).<\/p>\n How excited I was, having lived in BC most my life to discover the wonderful piglet bug Bruchomorpha beameri<\/em>, a wonderful fulgoroid planthopper that I had no idea even existed before taking this contract!<\/p>\n It was heartening, sitting there alone, singing softly along to Leonard Cohen that people out there on Twitter responded so well to my excitement at discovering these treasures, and offering helpful advice. Terry Wheeler<\/a> \u00a0was especially helpful when I was stumbling over some puzzling scathophagids from the Peace District.<\/p>\n Connecting with people like Terry, who encouraged me through my ID struggles made me feel that despite being on the outer edges of my knowledge and what could reasonably be called paid employment in entomology, people cared about what I was doing and were there if I needed them.<\/p>\n With the help of Terry, Antonia<\/a>, Laura Timms<\/a>, Lu Musetti<\/a>, and the great Leonard Cohen, I struggled my way through my contract, and my first eastern winter. Last week, Leonard Cohen died, leaving a huge hole in Canadian songwriting. We still have his recordings and poems to keep us company, though no matter what we are doing.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, I will head back to the ROM as a volunteer, to help sort out some of the ant collection, to the best of my ability. Perhaps I will listen to some of Leonard Cohen’s music, and tweet out some of what I find to connect me and my entomology work to the wider world.<\/p>\n [youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NW7oNpzBSGc&w=560&h=480]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last winter, I spent a few months working on insect identifications for the BC Conservation Data Centre, mostly collections of insects made at newly-acquired conservation lands in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions of BC. As I had no laboratory of my own, and no reference collections to work with, I\u00a0was working out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[477,473,16],"tags":[506,507,508,509],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canadian-entomology-fr","category-blog-fr","category-non-classifiee","tag-leonardcohen-fr","tag-flies-fr","tag-inspiration-fr","tag-news-fr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5766,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions\/5766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"23791534796_13b7369fdf_o\"](\"https:\/\/escsecblog.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/11\/23791534796_13b7369fdf_o.jpg\")
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