March 26-30 Helen and her co-conspirators created a peep show like none other to start the week. In a menagerie of fossiliferous marshmallowness, they followed the original ichthyosaurus discovery in 1810-11 by Mary Anning on the coast of Southwest England, brilliantly replacing Mary with a marshmallow peep. This will make perfect sense if you see […]
Month: March 2018
Three weeks ago I came down with the flu. I was sicker than I have been in years. For a full five days, I could only manage to quiver on the couch and binge watch old seasons of Scandal. One episode would end and the next would automatically begin until Netflix asked incredulously, “Are you […]
I wrote this story last year about my ancestors and their reluctance to accept foreigners. I have begun preparations to move from Mexico to Maryland, home to the Hardcastles during the Revolutionary War. I thought it was fitting to return to them one more time. Having a child changes a man. Perhaps not as much […]
Not long ago I read The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, an excellent and, sadly, extremely relevant history by Linda Gordon. Unlike the Reconstruction-era Klan, the KKK of the 1920s targeted not only African-Americans but also Catholics, Jews, and immigrants of all nationalities, […]
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that […]
Once upon a time there was a fossil seller and paleontologist named Mary Anning. In the early 19th century, she and her brother found the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton. In the early 21st century, we immortalized her in marshmallow form. Presenting Mary Anning, Paleontolopeep: A diorama by Joanna Church, Helen Fields and Kate Ramsayer. Mary […]
March 19-23, 2018 Sarah knows so many lovely words, and on Monday, writes about learning even more. When they talked among themselves, they spoke exclusively in Chilean Spanish, which, one of them—Fernando—gravely informed me, is even worse for outsiders than Argentine Spanish. I was awash in a sea of musical sounds whose meanings I could only grasp at […]
March 1, from the data-driven, unexcitable Capital Weather Gang: “On Friday and Saturday, a powerful storm will lash the Northeast with destructive coastal flooding, wind and heavy snow. It is shaping up to be the most destructive nor’easter of the season, perhaps the most destructive in decades for some along the coast. The National Weather Service is calling […]
