Miscellaneous
A few weeks ago I published a story in Hakai about the hidden story of the ancient maritime Maya. It’s not the first time I’ve written about the Maya – in fact, for a while there it was a bit of an obsession. I’ve always found ancient Mesoamerican history fascinating. Partly, I just love history. […]
I was going to write this post Sunday evening. I was going to write it yesterday. I was going to write it this morning. I was going to write it this afternoon.
My aunt is standing in front of the book shelf scrutinizing two rows of photos. It’s 1 a.m., and a little while ago I was dead asleep. But now here I am, awake, because here she is, standing in her pajamas with her hands pressed into her back, looking hard at faces in the frames. […]
It’s the end of the year, which is a time that I generally spiral into complete crisis. Did I do enough this year? Did I produce enough? Did I spend too much time on Twitter? Did I meet my goals? What the hell did I even do for the last 11 months? What do I have […]
Jessa Gamble is embedded in an experimental evolution lab at the University of Ottawa. Hope Jahren writes that you can hear corn growing in the Midwest. It sounds like the collective rustle of husks adjusting to accommodate the day’s inch of growth. I am tempted to put a microphone in the incubator. Would my bacteria […]
A friend, author Ginger Strand, recently took this picture of a handprint I spray-painted on a wall in Manhattan. When I put it up a few years ago, the wall was blank, and she wanted me to know that graffiti has bloomed around it, along with this sweet little cluster of stars somebody put […]
It has been said that penguins appear to be wearing tuxedos—crisp and elegant in their blacks and whites. This is not so of Humboldt penguins. If Humboldt penguins are wearing tuxedos, then they have been wearing them to jump trains for a couple of weeks, sleeping atop coal slag or down in the dingy corners […]