“Look, our snowman is still there,” I said Monday morning. “Oh!” my daughter said. “It is! Mommy, will it be there for all the times?” I picked her up. “No, it won’t,” I said. “I think it will melt. Remember how we talked about snow melting?” “Oh,” my 3-year-old said. “Okay.” Her disappointment was audible. I […]
Rebecca
I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship. ~ Pablo Neruda When you land in Chile, the first thing you notice is the color of the sky. An easier thing to describe is the second thing you notice: The dogs. The country […]
The other day, a giant rocket riding a triple tower of fire lifted a rich guy’s car into space and on to the asteroid belt. You probably heard about this, if you have access to the internet or a newspaper. It was the coolest thing you have seen in a long time, or the most […]
On the first Monday of the month, at 11 a.m. sharp, my community fires up the tornado sirens. Their wailing echoes down the streets, screams among the trees, bounces off the granite side of the church on the corner, and annoys the hell out of my dog. After about 45 seconds — that is a […]
There are certain places in our country that are known for storytelling, the cowboy poet said to us. From New Orleans Cajun country to Lake Wobegon, a few small, distinctive regions — not New York, and definitely not Washington — have become known for their storytelling styles, and for their stories. “Western stories are the […]
Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world show that this unique object was traveling through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky or high-metal-content object. – European Southern Observatory, Nov. 20, 2017 Science […]
A small raptor alighted for a few minutes yesterday on the top of a tree in my yard. The bird perched up in the crown, on branches that have been bare for a few weeks. The tree is a pin oak, whose health was questionable when we moved to this house in the spring, yet […]
Last week Cassandra Willyard wrote that space bores her, and argued that astronomy writers need to highlight the human drama to hook her and other spacephobes. This is my response. This essay being one exception that probes the rule, I am a writer who does not get assignments from editors. At best, they ask me […]