Scuba Diving: I Finally Get It

Last month I spent a week scuba diving in Bonaire. Just writing that sentence makes me embarrassed about how much disposable income I have, but look, it was a cheap trip organized by a group, ok. I borrowed most of the equipment. And I don’t have kids to put through college. I got certified to […]

Redux: The Wonderful World of Oz…and Science

I was just sick for two weeks with some dumb respiratory virus, and writing a new post was low on my list of priorities. So please enjoy this old one, which originally ran December 3, 2013. Lately I’ve been reading my way through the series of Oz books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is only the first […]

2019: Not Totally Garbage So Far

I had some trouble with the state of the world in 2018. As a result, I’ve been having trouble figuring out what to write for this blog. (I wrote about this problem in October.) Christie suggested “beginnings” as a topic for today’s blog post, and I noodled around a while on that. But when I […]

Winter Theme Week: Ice is the Worst

This holiday week, we’re looking back on some favorite posts about snow, ice, and cold weather. In this post, originally published March 6, 2015, Helen tells ice to go back to where it came from. I am on the record as loving snow and cheerfully tolerating cold. So you’d think I would love winter. And […]

Winter Theme Week: Below the Snow

This holiday week, we’re looking back on some favorite posts about winter, snow, and ice. This post by Cameron about life under the snow originally ran on June 5, 2013. It’s after Memorial Day, so I should be wearing white instead of thinking about the white stuff.  (Although if I were in the Arctic Circle […]

Looking at Lichen in 2018

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a beautiful sunny afternoon, I met a friend and her sister in a park along a creek for a lichen walk. I had a small obsession with lichens a few years ago, and I wrote about it in a three-part series for this blog. (Part one, part two, part three.) […]

Singing Our Hearts Out

This was originally posted August 5, 2013. I just spent all weekend singing with many of the same people I was singing with then, so I thought this – my first post as a person of LWON – was worth sharing again.  Recently I was rehearsing a glorious 16th-century motet with a group of 20 […]

Quirky Little Nature Essays Don’t Seem Quite Right Today

My favorite kind of post, in the years I’ve been writing here at LWON, has been about little moments of urban nature. A few weeks ago the bumblebees were all over the sunflowers at the community garden, and they were wonderful. I’m still excited about the vulture I saw swoop down to the railroad tracks […]