Cincinnati Magazine
January 22, 2021
His branches ruffle in the light breeze under a brilliant sun, a lone sentry in a clearing surrounded by the traditional guardians of Ohio’s forests. The hemlocks, maples, white ash, and sycamores seem to watch over him, giving the youngster the space and energy to grow. And he has.
Illustration by Andrew Davison
At age 3, he’s already more than 12 feet tall, and his distinctive foliage suggests he is healthy and ready to reign as the King of Hocking Hills. Instead, he’ll likely wither and die within the next 10 years.
As pioneers poured over the Allegheny Mountains in the 1780s and began settling eastern Ohio, they passed under the canopy of millions of American chestnut trees. We would be awestruck by what they saw: mammoth brownish-gray columns of bark towering 100 feet in the air, the first branches not poking out until halfway up to heaven before splaying their splendor in a crown of green sawtooth leaves.
Obituary: Christopher P. Monkhouse
BRUNSWICK - Christopher P. Monkhouse, 73, the former chair of the European decorative arts department at the Art Institute of Chicago, .
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BRUNSWICK – Christopher P. Monkhouse, 73, the former chair of the European decorative arts department at the Art Institute of Chicago, died peacefully on Jan. 12, 2021 at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House, Scarborough. The cause of death was a stroke.
Born in Portland on April 2, 1947, Christopher was the son of William A. Monkhouse, M.D., and Agnes Pruyn Linder Monkhouse. He attended Waynflete School, graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1965, and in 1966 studied English country houses at Attingham Summer School, Shropshire, England.
We are hardwired for story. It is our nature to weave the experiences of life into narrative, both as individuals and societies, and this storytelling nature is as intrinsic to our species as purring is to cats and singing to birds. Here we wrestle with the deepest questions of humanity,
The presiding scientific genius of the Romantic age, when science had not yet been dispersed into specialties that rarely connect with one another, Alexander von Humboldt wanted to know everything, and came closer than any of his contemporaries to doing so. Except for Aristotle, no scientist before or since this German polymath can boast an intellect as universal in reach as his and as influential for the salient work of his time. His neglect today is unfortunate but instructive.
Humboldt (1769–1859) undertook to disseminate the knowledge he acquired as rapidly and widely as possible, and initiated a network of correspondents among the world’s principal scientific specialists. Thus, Humboldt’s prodigious achievement ironically made it impossible for his scientific descendants to have a career so wondrously varied as his. Taking the entirety of nature and culture as his province, through the gathering and arrangement of all the particulars that one extraordinary mind could hold