Rain has been falling on the driest non-polar desert in the world, famous for parts of it not seeing a drop of rain for centuries. The Atacama Desert in South America is caught in the rain shadow of the Andes on one side, and cold dry air washing in from an Antarctica ocean current on the […]
Month: November 2015
Sometimes, while out on the job, I have to pinch myself and think, ‘hold on to this moment.’ Because the moments that make up my workday can be truly fabulous. Here’s what last week’s pinch was for: I was squatting on the ground at the Bifengxia panda base in central China, on a cloudy but pleasantly […]
When I was in 4th grade, my teacher gave everyone in class an ice cube. Our task, she said, was to keep it from melting for as long as possible. In a room full of 10 year olds, that task turned into a heated competition. But I wasn’t worried. I’d had a stroke of insight: […]
November 2 – 6, 2015 Our identities include our birth dates, says Sally. So what if you don’t have one? Helen walked the Cotswold Way and entered the liminal state of all pilgrims. How happy are clams, really, asks Cameron. Guest Nicholas Suntzeff reminisces about the old tensions between Chile and Bolivia, and how losses […]
I let the children have a go first and then reach out a recently hennaed hand, palm up, to accept the flannel armband from Mounir. The whole thing suddenly seems a little flimsy. Are birds supposed to wobble? I’m a lot taller than those children, and my arm is accordingly further from the ground than the […]
Cassandra wrote a post about the landlocked Bolivian navy in which she explained, in passing, that Bolivia once had a coast but lost it to Chile in the War of the Pacific. One of the comments on that post, by guest poster Nick Suntzeff, was a post in itself and we thought you’d like to […]
I find myself thinking about the word ‘clam’ more often than is decent, at least without some thought. I call certain pairs of pants ‘clamdiggers’, even though I’ve never worn them to do such a thing. When I scrounge around to find dollar bills in pockets and drawers—and then these clams disappear quickly into other […]
I love walking. This seems like such a silly thing to say, like “I love breathing.” We’re humans, you and me. Walking is our thing. Being bipedal makes us us. But walking is also an activity that I love. It takes me places, it shows me things, it gives me ideas, it calms my nerves. […]
