Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of visiting CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) with a group of STEM-curious high school kids. Our guide on the visit was Shirajum Monira, a tiny, dark-haired woman, who spoke gently as she walked us through numerous exhibits, experimental facilities and scientific devices. She spoke patiently and […]
Month: July 2025
In 2021, I discovered figs, and I wrote about it here. Where have figs been all my life? I asked. A generous neighbor had a productive fig tree and over the next few Augusts, I made fig tarts (pictured above), fig cake (gift link to the recipe in the New York Times – you’re welcome), […]
I’ve always wanted a crow friend, and this summer I’ve been making an effort. Each morning I put a handful of dog kibble on a paper plate and set it out on our back-patio table. I also ball up a piece of aluminum foil to add to the plate for decoration, although whether crows and […]
I was recently in Japan with my high school graduate, a promised trip to a place I’d never been. My takeaway, besides humid summer heat poaching us in our own juices, is the wild green that took over anything humans left untouched. Hills are a chlorophyl riot, rugged canyons buried in canopies, creek after creek […]
You might have read this post before. And you might have read it while listening to Jack Black sing “Peaches.“ And maybe you did both of these things while eating a peach! But wait! The last time this post ran, in 2023, a kind commenter let me know that Western Colorado was a magical stone […]
Last Monday, 7/14/2025, NPR ran an interview with a woman who lived through the flood on Texas’s Guadalupe River, a terrible story and I paraphrase: The flood blew down her back door and filled the house, water pressure wouldn’t let her open the door to her 95-year old mother’s bedroom, so she had to get […]
I am not a person who grew up with dogs. Taiga—my first and only—came into my life when I was 29, an adventure companion that outshone all others. She is the muttiest of mutts, small and trim with foxy, rabbit-soft ears. Until recently, when people asked me what kind of dog she is, I would […]
The Scopes Monkey Trial was held 100 years ago this month, but it feels like just yesterday. Actually, it feels like today; it feels terrifyingly like tomorrow. The theocrats are ascendant, friends, and their rejection of evolution is tied to all the other monstrosities they’re imposing on public life. Theodosius Dobzhansky said that nothing in […]
