Welcome to one of Helen and Cameron’s periodic conversations on wool! If you haven’t been following along, this all started when Helen wore a wool dress for 100 days, and Cameron wondered how that was possible. Along the way, the two of us found we had the same sheep-themed place settings. Now, Helen is back […]
It is fall, and even though not much changes here, the light becomes low and golden. I feel like every season is my favorite time of year when it arrives, but this time, I really mean it. Here is a beautiful tree of gold from a trip to Japan, and here’s a post I wrote […]
We were walking past a line of shorebirds on the harbor’s breakwater when my son stopped me and pointed. “Does that bird only have one leg?” About two dozen black turnstones — I didn’t recognize them at the time, I had to use All About Birds later — faced into the wind, broadside to the […]
Our Roberta wrote a book! Roberta Kwok wrote for The Last Word on Nothing for several years — and once a Person of LWON, always a Person of LWON. Her first book, Lost in Curiosity, comes out on July 21. It’s filled with stories of the ups and downs of astronomers, physicists, frog biologists, and […]
This post first ran in the early days of the pandemic. There are some parts of the silence that I miss. But today, I am working in the back room of an elementary school as the “adult on site” during a camp run by high school students. There is singing and shrieking and laughter and […]
In April, the sun started rising early enough so that I started walking or running near dawn. Each time I returned, there were people gathered underneath the same cluster of eucalyptus trees in the park and I didn’t ask why. I mean, I wondered why, but people do strange things sometimes. Then, a few weeks […]
For years, we’d been trying to entice two kiwi vines to create some shade over the picnic table in the backyard. We gave them questionable water during a drought, fenced them off from predatory puppies and toddlers. As the years passed, they just looked sadder and sadder. Finally, we dug them up and put in […]
Many years ago, I wrote the following post after encountering the incredible amount of snails in our garden. In the intervening years, the snails have vanished. Now, my youngest son and I look forward to a particular patch of succulents on the walk to school that, when spring comes, turns into Snail City. It’s been […]
