Look at this worm!! Folks, I met this giant earthworm during a trip to a cloud forest in Ecuador where I was covering amphibian declines with photographer Joel Sartore for National Geographic. It may recall one of those corrugated plastic pipes you use to run water from your downspout to the street, but it’s not […]
Miscellaneous
A defensive back playing for a Texas university football team recently said something unusual into a press microphone. “I don’t believe in space,” he said. “I’m religious, so I think, like, we’re on our own right now. I don’t think there’s, like, other planets and stuff like that.” I welcome eccentric ways of thinking. Being […]
This piece initially ran exactly a year ago, and it’s no coincidence that the Canadian Broadcasting System had me on air again today. This time, though, it was a program called Good Question, Saskatchewan! which addressed the issue of why that province (mostly) dodged the hassle of daylight savings time. If you would like to […]
This post first appeared in March 2021. My longing for more spontaneous museum visits continues. A little over a year ago I made an unplanned trip to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. I had driven to the city to run errands but then decided to go look at art instead, a moment of pre-pandemic […]
*If you are home and not busy, would F. be able to get a Ziploc of ice? *Would one of you be able to do Monday morning carpool next week? *Any chance you’d have time to work Friday lunch? S. is home sick. *S. is staying home sick. Is there any chance you have time […]
My 4-year-old has developed a borderline unhealthy obsession with Star Wars over the past month or so. Yesterday, as I was reading from our latest purchase, 5-minute Star Wars Stories, I fell asleep. I was in the middle of a chapter about Ewoks. I’ll give you the gist: Heroes end up on a planet with […]
This post comes from 2015, which seems like lifetimes ago, and I don’t know what happened to the woman I interviewed or this small patch of earth in Iowa she was defending. I’ve often turned to this memory as a sign of hope in a decaying natural world, one person focusing her life on one […]
God damn it, advertising can be powerful. I mean, not that I would ever buy some stupid crap because I saw it advertised on TikTok, of all platforms…that place is rife with over-hyped junk and over-painted hawkers (the term “influencer” makes my toes curl, no joke) and I’m not pathetic enough to fall for their […]