Antoine de Saint-Exupery, legendary pilot and author of such books as Night Flight and Flight to Arras (French: Pilote de guerre), wrote of his forced landing in a Saharan desert, and of his chance meeting with a Little Prince there among the dunes. It is to be hoped that we are not forced down so,…
This morning I had breakfast in Manhattan with my oldest friend, a man I met in middle school in 1971. I’ve been travelling in The States the past few weeks to see friends and family and managed to find him through social media. He’s not a Luddite but he doesn’t have the usual Instagram presence,…
By Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. Last week I met a microbiologist, a former Vietnam War medic who has travelled the world meeting with other scientists, doing research, and working tirelessly to understand and manage infectious diseases. His dissertation focused on Alexandre Yersin, who developed an anti-plague vaccine at the Pasteur Institute in…
…and Pangolins An article this week in The Los Angeles Times details the culling of the Pangolin, an armored anteater rather like a tropical aardvark. The thousand-or-so scales that protect the animal from its natural predators – big cats: lions, tigers, and leopards — are no match for poachers. “…Because their meat is considered a…
By Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. One pleasant afternoon there was a knock on our door. Several little neighborhood children looked up at me hopefully and asked, “can we play in your grass?” Just then the cat pushed past me and dove off the front porch, disappearing in the tall stalks with only…
Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. Canada celebrated its bicentennial 52 years ago and threw a big party called Expo ’67 in Montreal. As an 8-year-old American, seeing Queen Elizabeth’s face on the money during an independence celebration was disconcerting, but the whirl of colors, the crush of onlookers, the fascination of the pavilions,…
By Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. [Originally published Aug. 2019, VBlog] Growing up, I loved my family’s edition of the Life Nature Science set, big hardcover volumes that were shilled by door-to-door salesmen. One was called The Birds I remember, another titled The Primates, then The Forests, Reptiles, and so on. I cannot…
[Originally published July 2019, VBlog] Late last year I had dinner here in Saigon with a friend of Daniel’s, John B. Izzo. Best-selling author, columnist, sustainability thought leader, world traveler, and general mentor-to and hobnobber-with captains of industry. In other words, someone I was eager to meet. We ate at a high-end vegetarian restaurant downtown…
