December 5-9. 2016 At a writing residency in Oregon, Emma finds a bird foot in coyote scat, and then sees death all around her in the forest. When I stopped for lunch, I took out my notebook and wrote, “Thinking mostly about nothing much except how the forest is death, death, life out of death, death accumulated so it […]
I am taking care of two fish this weekend. One is a nice, respectable goldfish. It’s orange and black, it lives alone in a bubbling tank with some seaweed and a little fake wooden log to swim through. It eats a few pellets of food every few days. The other has three eyes, and it […]
October 31 – November 4, 2016 On Monday, our Tom Hayden reflects on sharing his name with the other Tom Hayden, who died last week. Guest Laura Paskus has been trying to avoid the election. But the kids are asking questions—ones that maybe all of us should have to answer. Say your friend is being […]
I’ve written about cephalopod penises before, but the time seems right to approach this subject (with extreme caution) again. You know, because it’s Friday. The octopus and the number eight seem inseparable. We have read children’s counting books that feature this cephalopod prominently between pages 7 and 9; we flip through under-the-sea books that rhyme […]
The People of LWON and their splendid guests have several ongoing preoccupations, and rather than have you try to mentally collate them over the years, we thought we’d devote a week to each preoccupation. That way they’ll all be in one place. This week is devoted to redux posts on loving bugs. I wrote my […]
I’ve always had mixed feelings about tracking animals with satellite tags. It’s so cool that we can now see where creatures go, sometimes moment-by-moment, but I wonder about losing a bit of the mystery that surrounds some of their lives. (In the animal uprising, privacy issues may be high on their long list of injustices.) […]
Editor’s note: We’re having trouble with comments. Because we approve them before publishing, we need to be notified when they come in. We are not being notified. We can’t seem to fix this. We have not given up, we never give up. Meanwhile, please be patient, please? September 12 – 16, 2016 Autumn is […]
August 29 – September 2, 2016 Journeys bookend this week, while the middle was filled with grief and change, which are journeys of their own. On Monday, Sarah takes us to the rivers of British Columbia and the mysteries that bubble around and through them. It was as if the country itself murmured just beyond the edge […]