Blacksmith Scene (1893), thought to be the first staged narrative in film Last summer, after a decade in Canada’s Northwest Territories, I moved south to Ottawa. It is a city that holds deeper roots for me the longer I dig. Every day, I pass the park where my high school friends used to hang, and […]
February 15-19, 2016 Sea glass: a reworked human product returned to the sand from whence it was wrought. There’s less of it now, but you can tell a lot about its origins if you know what to look for. Designer and writer Matt Steel is working on a simplified version of Thoreau’s Walden, and Michelle […]
On a slushy Ottawa night last week, I tromped into the Officer’s Mess of the Royal Canadian Air Force, here to attend the 513th meeting of the Arctic Circle. When I moved north to Yellowknife ten years ago, my Aunt Diana wrote that her husband Graham would have been pleased I was living in the land he […]
In the early fifteenth century, a new artistic tool spread rapidly throughout Western Europe. Single-point linear perspective – a geometric technique that involves a rectangular grid stretching toward a central vanishing point – was a coup in the quest to represent three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces. Art had never looked so realistic, and the technique was ubiquitous for […]
Five years ago, I received a fateful invitation to join the Last Word On Nothing. Since then, almost all of the faces have changed, but its maverick spirit lives on. Much like the culture of the Dorset, featured in my first post in 2011…: There’s nothing like a lost tribe to pique child-like curiosity. When an […]
December 13-17, 2015 Michelle’s job as a climate change reporter feels like working a crime beat in a lawless nation. Compared with the natural, abysmal state of international climate negotiations, the Paris agreement is something she celebrates, however briefly. Christie, meanwhile, is not impressed. The Paris agreement doesn’t include shipping or aviation, and it relies […]
November 30 – December 4, 2015 Cassie provides a flashback for every parent, remembering the ultra-marathon that is early infancy. Christie marks her birthdays by exercising the privilege of a healthy body and honoring those who didn’t get to live this long. Erik is a father! His birth story involves bribing a cop and rushing through […]
November 16-20, 2015 Guest Ramin Skibba predicts a rise of Persian science that will parallel sanctions relief. Helen takes a tour of a DC wastewater plant that has a new biosolids processing system. Craig sees “The Martian” and traces its story through a continuum of intellectual striving that was alive in the Paleolithic development of […]