Ann: The first thing I have to say is, that is a glorious title. Was it yours? I ask because with every book I’ve written, the title was a matter of intense negotiations which I usually lost, and I wonder how you got away with such elegance and relevance both. Chris: It was my editor’s […]
Ann
I haven’t heard the foxes for a good year now. The woods is still there but the owners sold it to a buyer who promised to cut down only the middle of it, you know how buyers promise things. No trees have been cut down yet but a lot of people have been tramping through […]
Ann: After you’ve gone to the immense trouble of writing a book, having to sell it seems a bit much. My own personal best was always with the radio interviewers who began with, “So what’s the name of your book again?” So Richard, what’s the name of your book again? Oh, right, Gravity. What’s it […]
One day Erik and I were chatting happily about birds and birdfeeders, all sweet reason and collegiality. Then he said he’d found a squirrel-proof birdfeeder. And the conversation turned dark. Words were said in haste. We eventually calmed down enough to state our cases in a pleasant, civilized manner. [NOW WITH UPDATES. See below*] E: […]
The path I take in the mornings has a stream, Stony Run, running along one side. The path and the stream are in a tiny wooded floodplain you could throw a rock across. The floodplain and stream are more or less maintained by Baltimore city and by the surrounding community associations – “maintained” as in, […]
Science, every now and then, interrupts its usual flow of thick, painful jargon to speak in metaphors that reveal the poetry at its soul and lay out a clear path to meaning in life. I’m serious here. I twitter-follow an author named Robert Macfarlane, whom our Michelle also likes, and who posted his phrase of […]
I’m writing this to be the voice of all the people who have had this winter’s ratty cold and have not written blog posts about it. I’ve had it twice now, so aside from worrying about what that says about my fundamentals, I feel qualified to testify. I testified once before here but this time […]
Google is mighty, everybody says so. Like, nobody needs a library for anything. Like, my flight was delayed and the airline’s app was informative but needed 68 clicks so I googled the airline and the flight number, and Google not only told me first click straightup what the current delay was but also the expected […]