“It’s like a good plague,” read the tweet from one of my NPR station’s editors. Epic floods across the Midwest this summer, which more than one local official referred to as “biblical,” brought a wave of frogs and toads to Missouri. It is hard to overstate how much water inundated my adopted state, and […]
Climate Change
Tim Ryan–a mostly forgettable startled-looking white man candidate for the Democratic nomination for president–just debuted a new hashtag and some accompanying merch: #YouDontHaveToYell
Yesterday I woke up, after sleeping in, to the sound of my husband and 7-year-old son yelling at the screen during the Women’s World Cup final. I came downstairs in time to watch the end, and soon enough I was crying like anything, even though I am not a Sports Person. There was just so […]
I’ve prayed for rain many times, thirsty in the desert, craving a flash flood in a remote canyon. Watching rain fall, silky virga growing legs and touching ground, is worth any petition. I don’t know if prayers work. I’ve been a supplicant in the face of an oncoming thunderstorm only to see it make a […]
Before my sophomore year of high school, I went to Sea Camp, a week-long summer program in La Jolla, Calif., for (privileged) kids like me who were interested in marine biology. We learned about fish biology during the day. At night, we roasted marshmallows under the stars before falling asleep in our bunks. I was […]
We camped this past weekend at Big Sur, meeting up with some friends from the north. I made the reservations in November and wasn’t really looking at the calendar, so I didn’t realize that the weekend was a nexus of holidays—Passover, Easter, Earth Day. It felt right, though, being under the trees and in the […]
The other day I thought a ghost was flushing the toilet in my house. I was standing in the kitchen when I heard a slight moan, followed by a metallic-sounding whang and a rush of water. But I was the only one home. I was nervous for about two seconds, until I remembered the sump […]
David Grinspoon is a comparative planetologist and an astrobiologist. He’s also a big book nerd, and his love for both fiction and nonfiction are proudly on display in his own book, Earth In Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future. The book was recently featured in an ongoing series on “Resistance Reading” selected by authors and published […]
