Roebert - Untitled

Chinese jade carvings: corn, grapes, cabbage, and bok choy. (cr 簇拥烈日的花)

We are losing nearly ten percent of the planet’s insect population every decade due to human influence. If you have taken even an entry level biology course you understand how terrifying that figure is for not just humans but all life on Earth. As EO Wilson put it,

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”

Even despite the urgency of this issue, there are few conservation initiatives focused solely on preserving invertebrates. The Xerces Society is one such organization! If you share my concern about insect population decline (and you are able to do so), please consider donating to their current fundraiser to help protect our most vulnerable neighbors. They are still short of their fundraising goal!

My fundraiser for Xerces

My fundraiser for Xerces

The Xerces Society is a science-based conservation organization that promotes pollinator health, endangered species conservation, and pestic

I’m doing some research on Japanese ratsnakes because I’d love to get one someday, but you might get a few questions about them.

So when it comes to keeping snakes in plastic tubs, how should they be secured? Are normal ones that snap into place okay or do they need to be the ones with like handles that keep it shut?

With relativity to humidity, how difficult is it to keep 50% humidity in a glass enclosure?

Is it possible to use a ceramic heat lamp for a plastic enclosure or will it melt it? And how do you keep things like heat mats in there since they have chords that stick out?

Can you make hides out of plastic containers? And if so, should the containers be blacked out/not able to let light through?

How deep can a water dish be? One site said that Japanese ratsnakes like to swim so you can provide a bigger water bowl for them?

One site says “[in the enclosure, keep] Something rough, such as a rock. Rat snakes like to nudge against a rough surface to help them shed their skin.” Agree? Will a rough surface hurt the snake? Also any word on basking areas such as slate rocks?

Very cool, Japanese ratsnakes are a great choice!

You'll need the ones with handles that snap shut. I also recommend getting some tank clips in the right size for additional security.

50% humidity is usually manageable in a glass enclosure, but personally I prefer tubs for anything over 50% because it's just worlds easier, especially when you need to raise it during shedding. Japanese ratsnakes do best with humidity in the 50-60% range.

You can cut a hole in the lid and cover it with mesh to use a ceramic heat emitter safely with a plastic tub. For Japanese rats, though, they do best with a hotspot of 85 Fahrenheit and an ambient in the low 70s, so a heat mat is my preferred choice to keep them cool because they don't raise the ambient temp much. You'll want to keep the heat mat under the tub (NEVER put it inside) and regulate it with a thermostat with a probe inside the enclosure.

You sure can! I prefer black ones to help the snake feel hidden and secure.

Water dishes can be as deep as you like and can provide! Just be aware that your snake will likely defecate in the dish at some point, so don't put anything in that will be too difficult to clean.

A rough surface is standard for every snake to help them shed. You can provide a slate tile for basking, but if you're using a heat mat, the snake is unlikely to use it. I do recommend plenty of climbing branches, though - ratsnakes will definitely use those!

First - Genesis 1:5 "and the evening and the morning were the first day" Anon - Matthew 13:20 "But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it" Hate - Genesis 24:60 "And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them."

By - Genesis 7:2 "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." Price - Leviticus 25:16 "According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee."

Baby's first Anon hate by fisher price

I don't think any of those words are in the bible

The piano lesson- Vogue US (1994)

Debbie Deitering by Ellen von Unwerth

Printed Wool Challis Wrapper

1860s

Augusta Auctions

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

Yueqi Qi Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear

Dress

c. 1860-1864

American

Kent State University Museum