You’ve probably heard a lot of Pete Seeger songs in the last couple of days. And no wonder: When Seeger died on Monday, he left behind a very long lifetime’s worth of beautiful, cheeky, unforgettable songs. But what he left me — and the millions of other kids who grew up along the Hudson […]
Michelle
Happy 2014, the year after The Year We Broke the Internet. Last week, in a gloomy essay in Esquire, Luke O’Neil wrote that publications old and new have abandoned basic reporting—and worse, their basic concern for the truth—for the sake of speed and splash. “Big Viral, a Lovecraftian nightmare … has tightened its thousand-tentacled grip on […]
My five-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl. The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.) […]
Before dawn on October 3, 1932, in the small Columbia River town of Bingen, Washington, an 82-year-old man walked to the depot to catch the morning train to Portland. Under circumstances that remain unclear, the arriving train struck him down, killing him almost instantly. The man had lived in town for more than half a […]
25- 29 November This week, we gave thanks. Ann pointed out that sexual harrassment may be a subset of a deeper inability to keep other people from suffering the consequences of your own inner demons. Kant is involved. Jessa identifies a central mechanism keeping us from flying off into virtual existences — that pesky inner […]
Fear of insects is so common that it’s hardly worth remarking on. It’s those of us who don’t fear bugs who can seem a little odd. Science and nature illustrator Maayan Harel told us recently that while she’s acquired an appreciative fascination with her insect subjects, acquaintances still ask, with a shudder of disgust: “Are […]
Every year, a tiny bird called the spoon-billed sandpiper tours the Asian economic boom. From its breeding grounds in Chukotka, an autonomous region in the Russian Far East, the sandpiper makes a 5,000-mile migration through South Korea, coastal China, and finally to Southeast Asia — including the shores of newly busy Myanmar, where the birds […]
First, if you please, a moment of silence for the thylacine. The Tasmanian tiger, last seen in the wild in 1930, was once Tasmania’s top predator, snacking on possums, wallabies, and the unlucky Tasmanian emu. (Despite persistent rumors, the thylacine did not drink blood. Sorry.) When European settlers arrived, bringing feral dogs, habitat destruction and […]