I wrote this October 1, 2018. I was thinking about getting older and how that meant getting stronger or more concentrated or something; and of course life imitating art as it does, this particular coffee shop morning conversation happened at the same time. I was also thinking about the Kavanaugh hearings and the extraordinary anger […]
Miscellaneous
If 2020 has been good for anything except Purell sales, it’s been good for backyard observations. I’m fortunate to have two backyards–one in the woods, one in the ‘burbs–which gives me double the opportunity to get to know interesting critters. I’m populating this post with an array of creatures I’ve met (chased? trapped?) while hiding […]
Back in January of 2014, I wrote a guest post for LWON about a morning with a dog and here it is again, only slightly fixed up. A neighbor dog and I walk up a snow-crusted hill together. Glossy black lab mad for sticks and balls, he hasn’t forgotten how to travel with a human […]
I’ve been working lately to get a handle on where awe fits into our lives, especially the intersection of awe and science. In my journeys, I met someone who sheds light on the awe appeal of science fiction and how it has changed over the history of filmmaking. Michael Backes worked in Hollywood for decades. […]
Eight years ago, I wrote a post about my struggle to decide whether to have a child. Now I have two. The latest addition, who is almost eight months old, is a determined, wiggly, often screaming bundle of chub. He is wonderful. He is awful. He defies description. This is a letter I wrote in 2015 […]
The slow stretch of river where I like to swim gleamed copper yesterday morning, reflecting sunlight tinted red by wildfire smoke. I sat and drank my coffee as the sun rose, watching the silhouette of a hummingbird zip across the dun-colored sky. Four mergansers cruised across the pond then dove underwater, leaving barely a ripple behind them. “Must be nice to be a boat, a plane, and […]
The most striking thing about Konrad Steffen is not his accolades as one of the world’s leading cryosphere researchers, but how he could light a cigarette in a 60-mile-per-hour gale screaming across the ice. He’d duck into his shoulder with a lighter and in a second or two reappear with a glowing cherry. He held […]
