Lawrence Culver

@lawrencecphd

Historian of environment/climate/disaster/cities/culture. Also public history & urban/enviro/recreation public policy. UCLA Bruin. Book: The Frontier of Leisure: SoCal and the Shaping of Modern America; writing on climate & history in US & North America.

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Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· 23d

In The Odyssey I was also not expecting to see a scene paying homage to the monologue scene in “Paris, Texas,” but here we are.

In a scene from “Paris, Texas,” a 1984 film by Wim Wenders, actor Harry Dean Stanton talks on the phone facing away from a see-through mirror, behind which actress Natasha Kinski listens to and responds to the story he tells.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· 28d

Well thank god that’s fixed!

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· 28d

But Duluth was supposed to be “climate-proof!” (Not posting to be snarky, but to highlight that there are no “safe” places, no true refuges. We are all marching into the inferno, and the only recourse is to work together to change course and try to save everyone, everywhere.)

Promotional image for the city of Duluth, Minnesota, with a view of a bridge and a vast lake at sunset, and the slogan “the most-climate proof city in America.”

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· 29d

Carrie Nation of the WCTU is shown in a photograph holding her trademark Bible and hatchet to combat the sale of alcohol.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Jul 5

Glad you enjoyed it! It’s wild! By the time the continental republic transforms into a cornucopia that spews out Model Ts, hamburgers, hot dogs, baseballs, and TVs, there was really nothing left to say except:

A black-and-white photograph of film director Martin Scorsese saying, “This is cinema.”

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Jun 12

Personally, I always liked his later photo collages, which depicted landscapes not as romantic or heroic, but instead reflected the mundane and messy ways humans inhabit, use, and misuse the natural world. 3/4

“Pearblossom Highway,” 1986. This collage composed of small photographs depicts an intersection on a California highway that traverses the high desert Mojave on the northern fringes of metropolitan Los Angeles. The background of the picture is dominated by blue sky and Yuccas, but the foreground is dominated by highway signs and abandoned beer and oil cans.

Unlike some of his earlier work, this is not an idealized depiction of Southern California, and is a response to a long tradition in US landscape painting and photography that depicted idealized landscapes as embodiment of human values or “untouched” wilderness, rather than depictions of actual places and how humans have changed them.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Jun 12

No other artist more alluringly depicted—or profited from—the appeal of the sun, swimming pools, palm trees, Modernist architecture, freer lifestyles, and privatized leisure of postwar Southern California than David Hockney. 1/4

David Hockney’s painting “A Bigger Splash” (1967), depicting the splash (but not the diver who would’ve created it) at the end of a diving board in the backyard swimming pool of a peach-colored mid-century Modernist house with a flat blue sky and palm trees in the background. An appealing but strangely uninhabited image of Southern California’s culture of privatized leisure.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Jun 7

I just spent several days on a NPS research trip with university colleagues. Though they are chronically underfunded and understaffed—never more than right now—US national parks archives have incredible resources and amazing archivists and staff. And they have views that are *truly* without equal.

Bright orange and red eroded pinnacles and hoodoos in Cedar Breaks National Monument.

A view looking west over the eroded orange and red hoodoos of Cedar Breaks National Monument, and the green forested landscape beyond it. The overlook is at an elevation over 10,000 feet, on the western edge of the Markagunt Plateau.

Massive red sandstone walls loom over trees on the canyon floor in Zion National Park, eroded by the Virgin River and its tributaries in southwestern Utah.

Towering orange and white sandstone canyon walls loom above the Virgin River and hiking and wading tourists in this view looking into the Narrows in Zion National Park.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Jun 4

A route linking Tongva villages became Wilshire Blvd. One, Kuruvungna, had sacred springs reminding the Spanish of Santa Monica’s tears, inspiring names of the city, bay, and mountains. The springs remain. “It’s covered with concrete now, but there are these layers of history, just below our feet.”

A Mexican cypress planted more than 150 years ago shades the meandering waters at the Kuruvungna Sacred Springs, on the grounds of University High School near Barrington Avenue in Westside Los Angeles. A sacred and historic site for the Tongva, the spring can be visited on the first Saturday of each month.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· May 27

And take a look at this musical lineup. Milli Vanilli?!?!? Instead of playing the national mall, these should either be the upcoming lineup at a fourth-tier casino (“Only 2 miles from the OK state line!!!”), or performing at a Gen X high school reunion at the Ramada Airport.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· May 19

In this National Park Service image, a Torrey Pine grows high above the curving coastline of Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Southern California. This tree grows only in two small groves, one on Santa Rosa, and the other near San Diego.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· May 4

The Salt Lake Tribune’s Pat Bagley on Utah’s governor trying to ram through a gargantuan new AI data center with almost no notice, even though it’ll use more energy than the entire state and need lots of water. Maybe those can come from Asia too!

Huge AI center visualized as a Death Star looming over the Salt Lake Valley.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 19

When taken together, these kinds of "strategic" moves look like a playbook: a new president arrives and uses their vision to shake up mandates at the school. They take on massive levels of debt through a series of poor decisions, which might include increasing administrative bloat, building more buildings, or investing in shiny but costly new programs. The hope, presumably, is that these actions will attract donors and students. At the same time, faculty are pushed to the periphery of the strategic plan and globalized initiatives are encouraged alongside innovative entrepreneurship.

But higher education is not a business in the way that many of these MBA-influenced academic executives assume it to be.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 14

I’m excited to be headed to Philadelphia for the Organization of American Historians 2026 conference to participate in a roundtable, “Climate Histories of the United States,” on Thursday at 11 AM. It should be a great conversation! See alt text and link for more info. www.oah.org/conferences/...

Thursday, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Climate Histories of the United States: A Roundtable

The scholars on this roundtable will discuss how U.S. historians are integrating climate frameworks into their research and teaching, and how historians can provide historical perspective on climate policy debates.

Chair: John Brooke, Ohio State University

Panelists:
• Leila Blackbird, Brown University
• Lawrence Culver, Utah State University
• Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley
College
• Eric Herschthal, University of Utah
• Emily Pawley, Environmental History, Dickinson College

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 11

Purely for childhood nostalgia, I like that NASA has resurrected the 1970s-90s “worm” logo. (Hilariously the older one is called the “meatball.”) That red logo is a remnant of a more hopeful moment for space exploration and society, and despite everything it makes me glad to see it in space again.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 4

Definitely toast.

The Chicago School’s famous map of Chicago, a simplified radial circle diagram indicating various neighborhoods, racial and ethnic groups, and socioeconomic classifications.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 2

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”

Quote from the 1984 version of Dune, directed by David Lynch, with an image of Kyle McLachlan as Paul Atreides.

Seems applicable to our present moment!!!

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 2

Apparently Schrödinger's Tortoise is still with us!

Image of Gonzo the Muppet from a Muppet Christmas Carol

Jonathan the Tortoise, who did NOT die!

Jonathan the Tortoise is alive and well

• He's ~193 years old - the longest-living land animal on Earth

• A suspected crypto scammer went viral on April Fools Day pretending to be his vet

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Apr 1

So we may or may not have a Schrödinger's cat situation going on with Jonathan the tortoise. April fools and all that. (To be clear, I’m rooting for both the cat and Jonathan.)

Conflicting information about the status of Jonathan. The governor of Saint Helena may have just gone to check on him and found that he is in fact alive. However, this remains unverified. Schrödinger's tortoise!

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 29

It’s so weird! Are the branding consultants even *in* LA? The SLC 2034 branding is also weird. They’ve combined the world’s ugliest font, a fantasy version of a full Great Salt Lake, and made the whole thing gray. (To evoke the incoming arsenic dust storms from the empty lakebed?)

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 21

Uh oh

Pantropical spotted dolphin leaping 15 feet above the ocean surface.

If it starts singing “Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!” we’re screwed.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 12

Third stage guild navigators, obviously.

A third stage guild navigator arrives to interrogate the emperor in David Lynch’s “Dune,” 1984.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 11

The formation is named for Floyd Dominy, the unstoppable, unapologetic Director of the Bureau of Reclamation, responsible for Glen Canyon Dam, and numerous other dams. He was the Robert Moses of Reclamation in the US, and this vast mass of unstable silt may well be his most lasting monument. (4/7)

Vintage Floyd Dominy, Director of the Bureau of Reclamation 1959-1969, speaking in the opening scene of the excellent PBS documentary Cadillac Desert, based on Mark Reisner’s landmark book.

(He indeed had no apologies.)

Vintage Floyd Dominy, continued.

Whatever his flaws, lack of certainty and absence of drive were not among them.

“I have no apologies. I was a crusader for the development of water. I was the Messiah! I was the evangelist . . .”

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 11

It’s inexorably moving southward, deeper into the canyon and the lake, eroding away to reveal the glory of Glen Canyon, now visible again, including places once thought lost under lake waters forever, like the Cathedral of the Desert. (3/7)

The Cathedral of the Desert. Utah slick rock at its most sublime, loved by authors Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, and the few other non-Indigenous people who knew it. When it disappeared beneath the waters of the lake, it was assumed no one would ever see it again.

Another view of the Cathedral of the Desert. Many spectacular natural sites like this, as well as many ancient and contemporary Indigenous sites, were drowned by Lake Powell. Now they are returning, sometimes surprisingly intact.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 11

It’s caused by the Dominy Formation, a vast tongue of silt and mud slowly making its way into remnant Lake Powell, which once would’ve been carried to the Pacific by the Colorado River, but is now building up behind Glen Canyon Dam. (2/7) attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff...

A view of the Dominy Formation, in what was once the northern end of Lake Powell.

The lake last reached full capacity in 1983. As of early 2026, it is only 25% full.

Exposed silt layers of the Dominy Formation.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 7

One of these channels became an improbable but hugely popular surfing spot. When I lived in Munich, I always enjoyed watching the surfers, all patiently waiting in line for their turn, a highly organized German version of California or Hawaii, improbably airdropped into Bavaria. (3/4)

Surfers waiting their turn on the endless wave.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 7

It’s also a remarkable example of flood control. Located north of the Alps, Munich experienced spring floods when snows melted. The vast park is part of the flood plain of the Isar River, with multiple channels carrying water through the park, turning a hazard into a recreational amenity. (2/4)

Aerial view of the park, with the river visible. Multiple channels carry part of its waters through the park, once a dangerous floodplain.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Mar 7

(Gift article below.) Munich’s Englischer Garten, one of the world’s largest urban parks, larger than NYC’s Central Park, is one of the great achievements of landscape architecture, filled with trails, vistas, lakes, and Biergartens, all in the English style of landscape design. (1/4)

Cathedral towers and other historic landmarks of central Munich, seen from the English Garden.

An aerial view of the southern end of the English Garden looking north, with the Isar River visible on the right side of the park. The river, fed by snow melt from the Alps south of the city, had a history of flooding.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Feb 28

Boy do I have a depressingly timely movie for you

Bison fall to their deaths down a cliff face in a black and white poster for the film Eddington.

Lawrence Culver@lawrencecphd· Feb 26

Albert’s estate says NO