Last year I started drawing again after about a 16-year break. I say “again” like I ever really drew in the first place—really, I took a few classes, produced a few things that bore some resemblance to the thing they’d been based on, and quit. Then, one day toward the tail of last winter, I […]
Art
A while ago I was on a panel for the local science writing association, and each panel member was assigned to talk about writing about science in a way that’s both literary and beautiful. I gave my talk and a few days later, it was posted on the association’s website. Much social media ensued, all […]
“Look!” our guide said, and he pointed to a frieze at the top of a nearby building. We looked. The figures were inscrutable at first, but then the guide explained: The building had been a shop belonging to a wine merchant. We ahhh’d, not so much at the fact that the shop had belonged to a […]
On Monday, I asked: Do Penguins Need Sweaters? Answer: Not really. But my friends Joanna, Kate, and I thought penguin sweaters were perfect for the Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest. Our entry: Sweaters for Peepguins After the bunny peeps read on Peepbook that peepguins in the Southern Hemisphere needed sweaters, they met up at their […]
Right now at the headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, here in Washington, D.C, is an art show about climate change in the Arctic. Three local artists worked together on the show, called Voyage of Discovery. I know, art about climate change in the Arctic. It sounds depressing at best and […]
Several years ago, I splurged on a gorgeous red hardcover edition of Strunk and White’s classic book on writing, The Elements of Style. Illustrated by Maira Kalman, the pages are filled with fanciful depictions of punctuation and grammar rules. To demonstrate the use of the apostrophe in the phrase “Somebody else’s umbrella,” Kalman drew a […]
For most of the interviews we do, sources will be disappointed by what comes out. And we journalist are mostly okay with this because those are the rules of the game. But every so often a person gets a little […]
A few months ago, I got my dream assignment. Well, okay, it wasn’t really an assignment – I cajoled an editor into letting me write about Cancun’s famous underwater museum, Museo Subacuatico de Arte, or MUSA. The idea isn’t really new – put some stuff underwater that fish like to hide under and watch as […]