Look, It’s A Bear! Again!

Last week, I was wiping up crumbs when brown motion out the window caught my peripheral vision. It was not random. It was deliberate, but quick, and it was dark. It was not my dog, because she was under the high chair seeking the crumbs I was wiping. It was not my neighbor’s dog, who […]

The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed

This essay originally appeared on LWON in 2012 as part of a series on the seven deadly sins. Since then, sociopathy hasn’t gone away, so we’re reposting it here. I wuz robbed. A few months ago a scientific discovery that I had covered in depth in my most recent book became the subject of a […]

The Artifice of Mondays

I am not especially fond of Mondays and I never have been, at least since learning of the existence of this artifice. I use the word not to mean fake — because Mondays are quite real — but to define them as made by human hands. In the rest of the universe with its whirling […]

Rivers of Noise

Manhattan rattles my ears. Subway lines shake the fine bones inside my head. Cars honking on the street change the way my brain physically functions. When I stayed in the city a week ago I noticed the same as I always do: noise. I live in a quiet place off the grid in Western Colorado […]

How are you?

Lately, I’ve had some form of this conversation several times a week: Hello! Hello! How are you? Good! How are you? Pretty good. Or, you know, good considering…everything. [chuckle] Oh yes, me too — fine considering it all. Usually, this is the preamble to whatever the meat of our conversation will be. But a few […]

Just Keep Swimming

The slow stretch of river where I like to swim gleamed copper yesterday morning, reflecting sunlight tinted red by wildfire smoke. I sat and drank my coffee as the sun rose, watching the silhouette of a hummingbird zip across the dun-colored sky.  Four mergansers cruised across the pond then dove underwater, leaving barely a ripple behind them. “Must be nice to be a boat, a plane, and […]

Bad homonyms, or, things not to say to a British person

Several years ago the Economist published a chart for American expats in the UK. It disambiguated what British people say from what Americans hear them say. For example, “you’re very brave” does not mean “I think you are brave” when a Brit says it. It is more likely to mean “you are insane.” I had […]