I was at the Seattle Pride parade last weekend, where I saw multiple people wearing t-shirts that said “Y’all means All.” It reminded me of how my husband got me using this gender-neutral, inclusive word. This post first ran a few years ago, and it’s as relevant as ever. Most people don’t adopt a new […]
Miscellaneous
Almost 15 years ago I traveled to a polar ice sheet with two key researchers who have since passed away. First, José Rial, who I followed to Greenland, was taken by cancer. His death was followed by his friend Konrad Steffen, one of the great Arctic ice scientists and explorers, who fell into a crevasse […]
I keep saying I’m done writing about buggy things for a while and will address something more scientifically pressing, but here we go again. Because periodically in the summer, a house centipede rears its skittering self, scooting out from under the fridge or appearing out of nowhere on the bathroom wall. I profess to love […]
A coyote urine mark I investigated with my nostrils in the snow was lemony and oceanic with an aftertaste of burning sulfur and fetid saltwater. A healthy piss from a black bear in the sand I’d call oak barrel stank. I got my nose as close as I dared into the stained hole from the […]
An unsung advantage of partnership is not having to be quite so on top of things all the time. Liberated from the relentless need to be competent, you can think more interesting thoughts. This post was originally written a few months into the pandemic, and my own thinking was so discombobulated I have very little […]
I really did think they were sunflowers. The seedlings had the same broad, happy green leaves. And I had planted sunflowers there. I think I planted sunflowers there? This is my problem with gardening. I start with enthusiasm and good intentions, and then somewhere I lose my drawings that I’ve made of what seeds went […]
For a recent edition of Smithsonian Magazine, I wrote a retrospective on the life and career of Marie Fish — ichthyologist, bioacoustician, and epitome of nominative determinism. Fish spent decades recording marine animals in her laboratory and at sea, and revealed that, far from being the “silent world” described by Jacques Cousteau, the ocean was as raucous as a […]
[This post ran some years back. I’ve been thinking again about food and gut health and all the bad stuff we do to ourselves, so I thought I’d re-run it. I mean, eat what you like. But be mindful of all the things.] —– Here’s what I remember eating as a kid: Oscar Mayer bologna […]