Sarah dipped her fingers in mineral paint and lifted them to her face. Standing on the bold, white surface of the Harding Icefield in south-central Alaska, she painted brown-red stride-marks across wind-dried skin. We were several days into a trek by skis, ropes, sleds and backpacks, and were as far out as we’d get. She […]
Miscellaneous
There a few moments in your childhood that stick with you the rest of your life. I don’t mean first kiss, prom, or that time you punched Kelly Weir in the stomach for stealing your bike (believe me, he had it coming). Those are big moments. I mean the little things – the things that […]
July 14 – 18, 2014 First we domesticated our pets, says guest David Grimm, and then over a long, long period of time, they civilized us. For which, thank goodness. Christie had a friend who was dying. In the meantime, how should he stay alive? Nice answer: by inviting friends over for a Colorado summer […]
Lyme disease is a growing scourge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention receives about 30,000 reports of the disease each year, but agency says the number of actual diagnoses could be ten times higher. Once upon a time, we had a safe and effective vaccine to prevent the disease. But this vaccine, called Lymerix, was withdrawn in 2002, just four short […]
July 7-11, 2014 This week Richard finally lets slip what he was doing on his trip to Italy – communing with the shriveled remains of Galileo’s body parts – and Abstruse Goose sets himself a Sudoku-style plot challenge. Craig recounts some lengthy discussions with E.O. Wilson, who reminds us that dying species don’t look […]
It’s been a while since we had a roundup of children’s books. So long, in fact, that the last time we had one, I wasn’t yet interested in children’s books. Now, it’s situation critical. My town has one little bookstore, and our library is accessed through several flights of dingy staircase at the back of a […]
June 30 – July 4, 2014 The bear in the trailer was bad enough. But the woodrat with the sometimes hard-as-concrete and sometimes soft-as-honey urinary deposits? Craig puts on his shower cap and starts scrubbing. Guest poster Gabriel Popkin visits spineless creatures in Washington, D.C. Feel free to insert your own punchline here. Erik’s wife says good riddance to the local […]
It was water that impressed me first when I got back to the U.S. I spent the month of June in Saudi Arabia, teaching teenage girls about writing and science. On the van ride home from the airport the other day, I couldn’t believe the trees. I’d forgotten about trees. The highways are lined with […]
