I wrote this post in 2018, and I’m happy to still be leaving on the same . . . road? * Let’s call the thoroughfare I live on Lemon Grove. There are two signs for it, one at each end of our block. Until very recently, one of the signs read, “Lemon Grove Avenue”. The […]
Month: February 2025
Hello friends, how are you holding up? Can I give you a hug? The world is burning, literally, and figuratively, but we can’t give in to despair. The shock and awe strategy we’ve been living through this last month is disorienting, infuriating and disheartening, but that’s the point. The people leading this assault on science and […]
I’m not actually much of a doomscroller, but my default choice when I want a moment of distraction is to hop over to Facebook, Instagram, or the Washington Post. And, lately, hopping over to Facebook, Instagram, or the Washington Post brings not fun distraction or even interesting diversion. Instead, it does nothing but give me […]
The first time I landed on the Siple Coast of West Antarctica, I immediately felt disoriented. The landscape was a monotonous flat white, with wind-scoured snow and ice extending to identical horizons in every direction. In this isolated spot 380 miles from the South Pole, the only point of reference was the pile of bags […]
I’ve been following a wild animal sightings page for a couple years and it started with useful game cam shots and pictures of tracks, a place a wildlife biologist might pause while scrolling. Lately I see more from hunters hoisting lifeless bags of fur in their arms, which is a form of sighting, though I […]
This post originally appeared in 2011, when apparently I had the sensation of technology accelerating into escape velocity. I could have had no idea what was to transpire 14 years later, but looking back at this piece, the toddler still seems like an emblem of the age—our new age of AI. Little fingers swipe and […]
Anyone else having trouble focusing? Me, too. This week, while trying to write this blog post, I spent an inappropriate amount of time looking at prepared meal delivery services with no plan to purchase anything. The food just looked so calm and pretty in its little jars. So I do what I often do when […]
This first ran on June 15, 2020 but it is about what happened the previous January. January 2020: things were objectively scary, what with an honest-to-goodness international pandemic and a blind-sided health community. I don’t think things have objectively improved since then, not on the whole, because even though that pandemic wound down, the next […]
