Oh Wow: An Exercise in Certainty

Key:* = Pretty darn sure** = Scientists are making some educated guesses here Hundreds of millions of years ago during the Ordovician period, someone blorped and wiggled around in the shallow waters off Gondwana.* This someone didn’t have jaws or fins,** nor did they have utility bills or shoelaces.* Their name—as assigned by strangers who […]

By the wind sailors

This post first appeared in March 2023. I can’t wait to go to the beach again. Walking south along the beach towards Los Angeles this weekend, my friend and I were talking about all the arbitrary things that can alter a life’s trajectory, like where you’re born or if your parents went to college. As […]

Not Everything Is Terrible, Poetry Edition

* Text: If You Were Looking for a Sign, This Is It Yesterday was hard. The day before yesterday, hard, too. Somehow, something about today has made it soft. Not the unrelenting blankness of the December sky. Not the pain in my teeth, or my hands, or my aching heart. Not the electric bill. Not […]

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays Uponst Us All

And the People of LWON, on this day, are taking a break. They will be back, they promise, rarin’ to go, on Friday. Please come back. ________ Photo: By Markus Koljonen (Dilaudid) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4270871

This, Too, is a Dog’s Life

As I was researching and writing DOG SMART, trying to understand what it means to think like a dog and experience the world as a dog, I had an epiphany of sorts: Dogs around the world wandering the streets—the “village” dogs you are bound to see roaming here and there, often with a few pals, […]

The Archaeology of You

This post ran back in 2018 and digging it up was another act unearthing oneself, something I end up doing when rummaging in my car, when I clean my desk. Our own lives are archaeology. Put a trowel in your hand and go through your past. Bounce ground penetrating radar through your heart. See what […]

Cavewomen with Backpain Take Revenge

I’ve suffered from migraines my whole adult life—two day-long affairs that I would slog through with an unwise amount of cumulative Advil. Until, that is, a neurologist offered me a calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP)-inhibitor, the first new pain treatment in decades. It’s solved the problem with a decisiveness I would never have thought possible. For […]

Our Moon

Last week, Ann wrote about her moon epiphany and Our Becky’s book (Ann: “Our Moon, you know the one, lead review in the NYTimes Book Review, longlisted for the National Book Award”) about our most glorious satellite. I got to ask Becky about Our Moon in January, and I’m thinking of this conversation again at […]