I am an American citizen, and I don’t look like someone you would stop if you were on the street trying to harass immigrants, but I wasn’t born here. (I’m not an immigrant, either – I just happen to have been born overseas.) I’ve spent about 15% of my life in other countries. And my […]
Month: February 2026
I had the honor of chatting with my friend, colleague from Nat Geo magazine, and fellow LWON contributor Neil Shea, whose first book, Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic, is now out there in the world! It’s a lovely book. In it, Neil journeys through the Arctic seeking out […]
I’ve been in southern Baja reading Ann Finkbeiner’s accounts of the dismal cold of midwinter and I’ve felt bad. I know what it’s like to shiver in the gray, but Baja happened for me, Sonoran Desert splendor (my home desert), along the whale-happy Sea of Cortez, (the first giant body of salt water I ever […]
There is an Asian elm tree that I can see out of my office window. In the winter, its branches trace intricate lines against the pale sky. Every few years, an arborist casts ropes through the branches and climbs up to trim the tree. One year, he pointed out a fork in the trunk with […]
A month ago I wrote a post, It’s Still January, which is a re-hash of all my other posts bitching about January. I regret nothing in the anti-January posts, but I need to add February. I have good scientific reasons. Also other reasons. When the post was published, January 2026 was lying low. But since […]
In late August 2018 I traveled to the northernmost island in Canada to observe white wolves. These were an extremely unusual group of animals, and they had the distinction of being unafraid of humans. This alone was something, but beyond their fearlessness lay a subtler behavior that is perhaps best described as tolerance. Another way […]
This post originally appeared six years ago, before AI further challenged the societal value assigned to personal erudition. But Leonardo remains a guiding light for me, as for so many others. The daily to-do lists and life of Leonardo Da Vinci have much to teach a science communicator like me.
