David O'Hara

Two recent book purchases. Curiosity and wonder are not limited by geography. Philosophy springs up wherever minds are moved by wonder.

My teaching career began with ancient Mediterranean philosophy and American (U.S.) philosophy. In grad school I mentioned that to a German philosopher who laughed at me and said there was no philosophy in America.

It would have been more correct to say that he was not curious enough to ask what philosophy had rooted in the soil of this continent.

Over the decades of my university career I’ve enjoyed teaching Ancient Greek thought and American Transcendentalist and Pragmatist philosophies, but I’ve also loved developing new courses in the other philosophies of the Americas, and in classical philosophies of India, China, Japan, and beyond.

In recent years some colleagues and I have been reading all the African philosophers we can find. Naturally, we often run into problems of translation. But that makes every new book we can read a newfound treasure. The ideas are often old and deeply rooted, but new to my eyes. And what is new to me sparks wonder, curiosity, and new appreciation and admiration.

Pictured: Africana Philosophy by Peter Adamson and Chile Jeffers (Oxford University Press, 2025) and An African History of Africa, by Zeinab Badawi (Mariner Books, 2024) 📚🌍

Arrived at my office to find that one of my students had dropped off a copy of their handwritten notes. Friday’s class on the pre-Socratic philosophers and the origins of physics appears to have led to a weekend of deep thinking.

The notes are about matter, the concept of the void, the nature of mind, our place in the universe, and our responsibilities.

This is a great way to start the day.

J.B.S. Haldane famously quipped that if he learned anything about religion from his biological studies, it was that “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Yesterday I was thinking something similar about mollusks. They’re in the deep ocean and in my kitchen garden. Snails live in salt water, fresh water, and on the trees here on the prairie. Mollusks are everywhere, it seems.

When we encounter them we often flinch at their boneless, wet bodies.

Alternatively, when I say I study freshwater mussels, the first question many people ask me is “Can you eat them?”

We ecologists often speak more loftily of the “ecosystem services” that other species provide. Mollusks filter water, feed other species, and decompose other organisms.

It is a challenge to value our neighbors beyond the ways we can profit from their existence.

It’s a challenge, but I believe we are up to the challenge, and I think that if we try, we will find that rising to the challenge is good for all of us—and for our neighbors. 🐌🐚🦪

When we make education about employment, we neglect all the parts of life that are not employment.

Life is more than employment.

Interior view of the same shell as the previous sketch.

Last year I completed the Freshwater Mussel Workshop at the Museum of Biological Diversity at The Ohio State University. It was a great workshop that included lectures by experts, lots of time with specimens in the museum, and fieldwork in several nearby rivers.

There are a lot of species of mussels in North America, though, and many look alike to novices like me.

Much of my work in sketching mussels is about identification and gaining familiarity with each species.

I spend time on the river each week (don’t try this at home without appropriate permits, which I have) but sometimes I have to make a best guess when recording species I observe in my notebook. Later, sketching from photos and looking at my field measurements, I can usually make a more accurate determination of species. 🐚🦪🎨

Morning sketch: Amblema Plicata, one of the common mussels in the Midwest.

There are about 300 species of mussels native to the freshwaters of North America. They used to keep rivers clear and clean, until we started harvesting them for shirt buttons and pearls.

We harvested so quickly and recklessly most haven’t been able to recover.

We thought their abundance meant they would always be available.

But it turns out their abundance was partly due to longevity, and partly due to a healthy relationship with host fishes, and with healthy terrestrial plant communities that kept soil out of the water. And a number of other factors that we changed without understanding the long-term downstream effects.

A reminder that we all live downstream. 🦪🐚🎨

Fireworks in my garden.

Native prairie plants in my garden. Autumn is coming soon, but the blossoms continue to appear for now.

Why such beautiful flowers? I plant them for all my neighbors, including many pollinators.

But I choose them especially for my wife, who deserves all this and much more besides.

Sketching at my desk this morning, from a photo I took while looking for mussels in a nearby tributary to the Big Sioux River.

As always, the sketching helps me see more clearly, and it raises questions for me.

I’ve been looking for populations of live mussels and, lamentably, haven’t been finding any. I know they’re in there, but the population is sparse and spread out. Hoping to find some thriving populations soon. 🐚🦪🎨

Bumble Flower Beetles (Eurphoria Inda) on my Cup Plant (Silphium Perfoliatum). The plant is ten feet tall, and has hundreds of blossoms. These two were tussling over this one blossom like two kids in a big back seat shoving their sibling because they crossed the line.

Yesterday a student asked me to supervise her honors project. She has learned fly-fishing and wants to help people who might not otherwise have access to the outdoors and clean water learn fly-fishing as well.

She came to me because I am Director of Environmental Studies at our uni.

But she did not know that I was a fly-fishing guide in grad school in New Mexico, that I have written a book about brook trout, fly-fishing, and ecology, and that I teach courses about salmonids in Alaska.

Her face looked like she had just stumbled on a hidden treasure.

I gave her a copy of my book and agreed to advise her project. 🐟

What a delight it is to be thankful for the little things.

This is so easy for me to forget, but when I remember and pause to consider the world with gratitude, even for a moment, it’s like the lights coming on in a dark room.

American Rubyspot (Hetaerina Americana, male) damselfly. Sept 1, 2025. Beaver Creek Nature Area, South Dakota.

I told my Environmental Philosophy students we would be meeting outdoors all semester, except when tornadoes or lightning occur.

Watch this space for updates on how that is going here on the prairie.

One of the many things I’d like to do today if today were infinitely long is to write a paper about the usefulness of Peirce’s semiotics to developing a better A.I.

But I am off to teach, and to work in the gardens.

These are both good paths to follow.

I bought more buttons at the flea market yesterday. Buttons from an old farm, most of them with the thread still in them from when they were snipped off worn out shirts. Some of these buttons were made from freshwater mussels. 🦪🐚

Eighty years since the end of WWII, and the older I get the more I realize how little I understand about how it started.

Morning sketch: a freshwater mussel shell that was drilled to make shirt buttons, and a few buttons made from mussel shells.

For several decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s we hauled out thousands of tons of freshwater mussels (Unionidae species, mostly) from our rivers, especially in the Midwest. Today drilled shells can still be found along the banks of many of our rivers.

Buttons like these can easily be found in rural flea markets where jars of buttons from old farmsteads are for sale. When a shirt wore out on a farm, the cloth was repurposed and the buttons were saved for making new clothes.

We thought the mussels were a limitless resource because they no were so abundant. Roughly 300 species of freshwater mussels are native to the waters of the United States.

We didn’t realize that those mussels grow slowly, or that their life cycles could be so easily disrupted by our industrial practices.

We also didn’t know that a single mussel could filter 25 gallons (100 liters) of water each day.

Some species quickly went extinct or were extirpated. Most others have been put at various stages of risk of extinction or population collapse.

But remnant populations are still to be found throughout the U.S., and I am hopeful that many of them can be restored if we are intentional and careful.

One of my hopes is to see their populations increase in my river here in eastern South Dakota. 🐚🦪🎨

I’m requiring my students to keep nature journals based on what they see on our campus, so I am doing the same. Here are today’s entries from my journal.

These sketches represent three locations on campus: the orchard my students and colleagues and I planted; the outdoor classroom my students and I designed and built; and the campus pond, which is used by many of us as a campus-as-living-lab teaching site.🎨

After a yearlong sabbatical I head back to the classroom today.

This year has been a great gift, and I’m very grateful to the Bush Fellowship that allowed me to take classes, buy more books, and travel for research and study.

This week I’ve been doing what I always do before classes begin: tending the campus gardens, giving tours to alumni and emeritus faculty, attending meetings to prepare for the new semester.

And taking time in the silence of empty classrooms to walk around and lay a hand on each desk, pausing to think about students I don’t yet know. Someone will sit in this chair, at this desk. Who knows what that student needs from professors like me? What gifts do they have, what are they eager to learn? What is holding them back from doing wonderful things? How can I help? How can I get out of the way?

And at each desk I pray for that student. A quick prayer of blessing.

To teach them, and to hold them in the light for a moment before the term begins, is a blessing to me.

I don’t know how much longer I will teach here. I’m always thinking of new things I could learn, new paths of discovery and wonder to pursue.

But today, here, now, I am eager to return to the classroom, to learn the names and faces of my students, and to discover how I can help them take the next steps along their paths.

Morning sketch of a unionid mussel I found on the bank of the Big Sioux River earlier this year.

First the sketch, then the questions that the sketch brought to mind.

Sketching, like writing, can be a means of thinking.

🐚🦪🎨