I broke a pot the other day, not just any pot but a ceramic Acoma vessel I inherited after my father died decades ago. I snatched something from the shelf, barely tapping the little seed jar, its mouth big enough for a finger, maybe two. It barely rocked one way and then the other, energy […]
Miscellaneous
This post originally appeared in February, 2020. I resurrected it because I figure we could all use a dog hug, in this pandemic time of not hugging folks outside our households. When I return home from a trip, or really from any absence longer than 15 minutes, my dog Taiga greets me with the canine […]
This is my first pandemic, and I had no idea what to expect. Which is sort of on theme, because the the overarching feeling I’ve experienced inside the COVID-19 pandemic is uncertainty. Will I get sick? Will my loved ones die? How long will this ordeal last? Will we ever have a vaccine or a […]
It never hurts to celebrate, again, the oddities of life on Earth. Here’s a piece about a discovery reported in 2017 that reminds us of our humble beginnings. Our microscopic relative might have looked like this. The fossil, waaaaay bigger than real life. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Mouth. Anus. Reproductive bit in between. […]
Confession: I, like so many of my fellow Americans, am not getting enough sleep. Blame the baby. Blame the preschooler. Blame COVID anxiety. Blame my doomscrolling. Blame the dog, who threw up a clump of grass next to the bed at 4am. On a typical night, I sleep between six and seven hours with two […]
I am writing this post from bed. I can’t get up, because (shhhh) there’s a kitten purring on my chest. We picked her up from the animal shelter yesterday. There were dozens of kittens vying for adoption, but as soon as I felt her nudge my hand — polite but insistent, green eyes steady — […]
When one of the founders of conservation biology passed this week at 84, I heard it was peaceful, that he was ready. I imagine Michael Soulé’s heart and breath stopping and an incredible release of feathers and bones, colors of a million beetles, a rush of eyes of countless shapes. You might say he ushered […]
This huge bug hurled itself at me the other day and missed. It landed just to my left, on the wooden deck, and there it stayed—long enough for me to spend a little time admiring it. Alaus oculatus is what it was, and likely still is these few days later, named for its false “eyes.” […]