Back in 2017, I wrote a post debating whether I should have a second child. I almost didn’t. We tried and tried. We even went to a fertility clinic. And then we decided it probably wasn’t meant to be. I was already 40. “Let’s give it two more months and then call it quits,” I […]
Miscellaneous
Under a spring sky in the high desert of Western Colorado, we had a little gathering at our house. My wife’s childhood friend, awarded author and translator of Lithuanian poetry Laima Vince, stood on our wooden deck discussing a Jewish poet who was executed along with her family at the age of 19 in 1941 […]
Freshly back from my annual pilgrimage to TED, I’m taking stock of the brain-fizzing input that came my way all week in Vancouver. Each year has its own balance of technology, entertainment and design, and this year all three had a distinctly artificial intelligence flavor. The conference is built on ‘ideas worth spreading’, but the […]
I was in Borneo last fall, in a very wild place called Gunung Palung National Park, following orangutans and macaques and leaf monkeys, oh my. Being around primates is always very exciting, and nobody threw poop, which was a nice change from some primate-viewing experiences I’ve had. And yet, even considering the droopy-cheeked orange apes, […]
The other night I was on a walk and a shrub attacked me. Not an attack, really. We were on the sidewalk and it was claiming part of the airspace above. Of the two of us humans on the walk, I was on the shrub’s side, and the shrub and I had a temporary encounter […]
This post ran a few springs ago, in appreciation and imitation of Craig’s ‘penspective’ series, but with less effective photography. Spring seems like a wonderful time for cloud-spotting here. Last week, there was an amazing lenticular cloud in the shape of a cigar. I didn’t have my pen with me, but I can still remember […]
How could it happen? Was it the wrath of God or the malice of Poland? Was the crew drunk or was the Vasa wrongly built? The town was alive with rumours. I’ll bet it was. On August 10, 1628, the warship Vasa—the pride of Sweden, the talk of Stockholm—set sail on its maiden voyage. It didn’t […]
I used to think there was something wrong with ponderosa pines. As a kid, their wild, asymmetrical growth bothered me. I wished they would just be conical, and be Christmas tree shaped, like the evergreen trees inside the stores. I wished they were more like the Colorado blue spruce, the state tree I learned about […]