My dad’s 100th birthday would have been this weekend. 100! It seems incredible—so many years since 1923, so many things that happened in them. How different it must have been, how many things might have been not so different at all. These are the things I think I remember that he told me: behind […]
Month: February 2023
Earlier this month, Elise and I traveled to the Osa Peninsula, the appendage of tropical forest that juts off southwest Costa Rica into the Pacific Ocean. We chose that part of the country primarily to visit Corcovado National Park, a 164-square-mile protected area that the National Geographic Society once described, curiously, as the “most biologically […]
I grew up sewing most of my own clothes and developed an abiding and expensive fixation on beautiful fabric. Once I was in Florence at a store buying fabric, textiles (tessuti), as a gift for my mother. I stipulated in toddler-Italian a light wool (leggera lana) in blue (blu) for a dress for my mother […]
Abstract Many years ago, some birds started breeding on an island. Several thousand of them still do. The world changes around them, but their basic needs have stayed the same. Will they be on the island much longer? We don’t know. We hope so. The signs are ambiguous. Keywords: Seabirds, oceans, uncertainty Introduction A good […]
Last week on my podcast, my co-host and bestie Rosemerry asked me the last time I’d experienced awe. The honest truth was, I experience it almost every evening this time of year. For reasons that I’ll explain shortly, winter sunsets are the best sunsets. They are very often awe-inducing, and that means that they’re good […]
Time again to reach into the “Ask Mr. Cosmology” mailbag and see what readers want to know about . . . The Wonders of the Universe! Q: Does the word “creation” imply a Creator? Mr. Cosmology: No, thank God. Q: What does Mr. Cosmology think of the theorists who argue for the anthropic principle? Mr. Cosmology: They’re […]
Six or seven years ago, I bought a small, lopsided aloe plant from a holiday market for $7. I have neglected it for years, never changing its soil and rarely giving it enough light. It grew more and more crooked, and last year, its leaves (wait, do aloe have leaves? the fact that I don’t […]
