You can’t miss the cherry blossoms at this time of year in Washington, D.C. Clouds of white and pink proclaim the end of winter, on the streets and by the parking lots. Most famously, and unbeatably, they bloom around the edge of the Tidal Basin.
Last week, I was famous on the internet…for dressing colorful marshmallow bunnies in cravats and spreading them to the enthusiastic fans of a hit Broadway musical. My friends and I made Hamilpeep. Perhaps your cousin shared it with you? Hamilpeep was our entry into the Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest, in which readers are […]
Early in the 17th century, two lions lived in the zoo in Ghent. Their names were Flandria and Brabantia. There were probably other lions nearby. Archduke Albert and his wife, Isabella, ruled the region, now in Belgium, and they had a menagerie at their palace. Having a menagerie was the sort of thing extremely wealthy […]
Ever since I learned that lichen lives in the city, I can’t stop seeing it. I wrote about lichen two weeks ago in this space—about learning that some lichen thrives in the city and that there are many, many more types of lichen than I’d realized. Since my first phone call with a guy who […]
February 1-5, 2016 After digging out from Snowzilla, Ann recalled the last time her Baltimore neighborhood was buried under unreasonable quantities of snow, and how outraged she was at her poorly behaved neighbors. What are the chances of a giant supernova happened nearby? Slim. Or the chances of a Voyager-like probe from somewhere else coming […]
Yesterday: Urban Lichens, Part 1: OMG! Urban Lichens!, in which we learned that there are lichens in the city. So I’d established that lichens can, sometimes, live in cities. The next step: round up a lichenologist. On a sunny December afternoon, I met up with Manuela Dal Forno, a lichenologist. To be precise, she’s a […]
It was the big new concrete transit center that brought the lichens to town. In September, a huge new structure opened next to the metro station closest to my office. It has three levels, for buses, more buses, and taxis. It was held up by construction delays and disputes. The county and the transit authority […]
It was a year and a half after my internship at NPR, and I was in the habit of calling Joanne Silberner, who was then on NPR’s staff, for advice whenever I got a terrifying new assignment. I suppose this makes her one of my first journalism mentors. At the time, I’d convinced the magazine […]