Miscellaneous
The round things in this picture of clear water aren’t rocks. They are little balls of algae tumbling around the bottom of the Adriatic sea off the Croatian coast. Occasionally they float to the surface of the water. Looking at these little balls is likely having a very different effect on you than it had […]
My dad died last year at age 94, his death a blessing for him and, while immensely sad, a relief for me. My grief felt over too soon, but I realized it was because I’d been grieving him for years. I looked back thinking about those so-called stages of grief we learned about in Psych […]
Last week, I crabbed over papers at a late-night kitchen table while my very pregnant step daughter stood near me with her hands clasped atop the globe of her belly. She’d been pacing for most of an hour, not wanting to sleep or sit down. She wanted her pelvis as open as she could make […]
In 1925, teacher Wilfred Eitzman found a cobble—a rock slightly bigger than a pebble, the weight of a small rat—in a cave in Northern Province, South Africa. It was reddish brown with an unmistakable, prominent face etched into it. Two deep and perfectly round eyes, a shallow divet for a nose, and grimacing, toothy mouth. […]
Last week I went sailing for the first time since I was a kid. It was a beautiful day, and I was out with my son and some friends, and they were learning to sail and I was watching them learn to sail and watching the harbor become a beautiful expanse of coastline as we […]
OMG this saw whet owl. But it belongs in the forest, so I will leave it there. Years have passed since I collected these cuties. I still want all of them. If you’ve trolled the Internet any time in the last decade, you know that animals and their silly antics are very happening. And no wonder. For the most […]
I continue to have nothing good to say about Baltimore in August. In fact, if anything it’s getting worse though it’s incrementally-worse from already-bad. Like, the recent run of feels-like temps from 105 to 110 and I don’t even look at the numbers after that. And then once the temps get that high, afternoon storms […]