Ten years ago this week I bought one of my most beloved articles of clothing: A gray hooded sweatshirt. A heavy one, mostly cotton, with “Alaska Ship Supply” on the front. In April 2009 I lived on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, and, for the first few days of the month, it was […]
Helen
This post originally appeared on April 7, 2017. It’s always a good time to talk about whales and Peeps dioramas. I have a bit of a thing about whales. The shelf above my desk at home is full of whale art, and a National Geographic whale poster hangs in a frame above that. Along with […]
Yesterday I was thinking about how much I love the central dogma of molecular biology. “Central dogma” is a funny name for it. It sounds like it has something to do with religion, but it’s not; it’s just the thing that makes all living cells work. A cell has DNA; that DNA has a code, […]
I got my primary tip on writing postcards from Garrison Keillor, an essay of his I read at least a decade and a half ago: Don’t try to write a letter. (This was in an era when many people, including me, still wrote letters.) Write a little scene. Paint a word picture for the recipient. […]
Last month I spent a week scuba diving in Bonaire. Just writing that sentence makes me embarrassed about how much disposable income I have, but look, it was a cheap trip organized by a group, ok. I borrowed most of the equipment. And I don’t have kids to put through college. I got certified to […]
I was just sick for two weeks with some dumb respiratory virus, and writing a new post was low on my list of priorities. So please enjoy this old one, which originally ran December 3, 2013. Lately I’ve been reading my way through the series of Oz books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is only the first […]
I had some trouble with the state of the world in 2018. As a result, I’ve been having trouble figuring out what to write for this blog. (I wrote about this problem in October.) Christie suggested “beginnings” as a topic for today’s blog post, and I noodled around a while on that. But when I […]
This holiday week, we’re looking back on some favorite posts about snow, ice, and cold weather. In this post, originally published March 6, 2015, Helen tells ice to go back to where it came from. I am on the record as loving snow and cheerfully tolerating cold. So you’d think I would love winter. And […]