A few months ago, I visited the Pasteur Institute, a research center in Paris dedicated to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. The trip included a tour of the apartment and crypt of Louis Pasteur, the 19th century French chemist and microbiologist who developed vaccines against rabies and anthrax. My favorite part of the […]
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I got up before dawn, turned on our headlamps to find our shoes, and went for a run. It was cold enough that we could see our breath in the air, but we were sweaty by the time we got back to the trailhead. After our run, we […]
This is an update to a guest post that ran on December 12, 2018. A few days ago, I found the following letter from my grandfather, Donald Pearce, in my parents’ bookshelves. It was tucked into a copy of Medea which he sent to me when I was a high school sophomore. ( I was […]
About a year ago, I attended a high school talent show. It was over two hours long. The multipurpose room smelled of old pizza and pubescent sweat. The folding metal chairs made me squirm uncomfortably in my seat, as did many of the acts. Watching parents pull out their phones and prepare to post their kids’ performances online, I thanked […]
I love the prickly, dry ecology of the northern California foothills. I love even it in late summer, when nothing is left of most plants and people but an exhausted, brittle husk. That is when my favorite plant, the California buckeye, or Aesculus californica, comes into its own. Unlike me, Aesculus californica knows when […]
Earlier this summer, as I lay with my head on my boyfriend’s chest, I heard something odd. His heart — an efficient athlete’s organ that normally thumps fewer than 50 times per minute at rest— switched from its reassuring, steady bah-buhm, bah-buhm, bah-buhm to rapid staccato: bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah. I lifted my head and asked if he’d noticed it. Pete […]
This was my first guest post for LWON, in 2015. I’m reposting it because there’s yet another update: A few days ago, my mother revealed that, CONTRARY TO ALL HER PREVIOUS CLAIMS, it was the cat. … This week, while working on a little story for Science about hamster emotions, I decided to do some […]
In 2015, Sarah Grimes picked up this river otter’s carcass on a rugged beach covered in tumbled sea glass. She removed its skin and flesh and soaked its bones first in warm water, then Borax. She kept each section of the skeleton — legs, paws, spine – in a separate mesh bag so the bones […]
