Convention centers are funny places. They create insular worlds during any given symposium, but on the margins between those events they hold space for some random intermixing of cosmologies—the kind of interdisciplinary cross-pollination that open-plan architects could only dream of. Such a confluence occurred the weekend before the TED conference in Vancouver this year. I […]
Miscellaneous
In 2014 I wrote about backpacking through live lava flows in Hawaii. The experience was remarkable, and the man who showed us the way has since watched his own house burn, its remnants consumed by molten rock, something he said he thoroughly enjoyed. On that journey, I threw a penny into live lava, expecting it to […]
My November, December and January were a blur of travel for family and story and art. Maine. Utah. Colorado. Tennessee. Chile. Now, I’m in the thick of a long stretch of what might be best described as Desk Time. Neighborhood walk time. Hours of staring out the window, there but not there at all. All […]
April 9 -13 What is it like to find yourself masticated by the outrage clickbait industrial complex? Regrettably, Michelle found out when her otherwise uncontroversial article about how to talk to your kids about climate change got “rebranded” for maximum outrage by an anti-climate change propaganda site. Warning: this is not an easy read. The comments […]
Last time I was in my hometown of Seattle, I walked by the movie theater I worked at for many years in the 1990s and 2000s and found it permanently closed. Being sad and angry about changes in Seattle is kind of a thing, but I wasn’t just upset about a piece of the city–and […]
I don’t expect anyone to notice, but I’ve been on hiatus from Last Word On Nothing while I focused my attention on writing a book. With the book finished, I’ve decided it’s time to start blogging here again. My return wasn’t a given. Time away from LWON was an opportunity to contemplate whether I should […]
April 2 – 6, 2018 Nobody claimed Google’s Lunar X prize for going back to the moon, says Rebecca, and though China and India did/will get to the moon, “private moon exploration is a no-go.” Turns out going to the moon is hard. The lady in the log cabin whose collected stuff went up over […]
The fever and rash appeared the day before we were scheduled to get on a 747 from London to New York. Twin 1’s face was a streaky, sickly red except for death-pale stripes around her mouth. I knew what I was looking at, because Twin 2 had just finished the last of her 10-day course […]
