Redux: In Visibility

By: | October 16, 2018

This post originally appeared Dec. 17, 2017

On Tuesday, I texted my friend Michelle a brief video clip of a polar bear.

The bear is starving, all jutting hips and elbows, its fur sparse except for a thatch along its spine and Clydesdale tufts around its plate-sized paws. As with any bear, there is something disturbingly human about the shape of its body, about its movements and mannerisms. It staggers along on a green mat of tundra, foam dripping from its mouth. Dips its face into a rusty barrel and pulls out what appears to be a hunk of rotten meat. Sprawls on the ground, nose to earth, defeated by the visibly difficult work of breathing.

Watching the bear, I covered my mouth with one hand, suppressing tears. This perfect summary of unchecked climate change was like a knife to the kidney. Without sea ice, polar bears can’t hunt seals. And we are to blame.

“I honestly don’t think I can watch that,” Michelle replied. “I can’t get down with the voyeurism of photography generally.”

Michelle—an artist who’s been thinking a lot about polar bears and the Arctic these days—does not shy from engaging tough topics. What bothered Michelle was the lack of direct agency. The doing nothing in the face of such obvious suffering and then using the suffering to convey a message. Some key step had been skipped. More…

Destruction Can Be An Act of Creation

By: | October 15, 2018

This is a picture of a rift in our world. It was taken June 21 at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, in a rip called Fissure 8. What a remarkably utilitarian name for a tear in the planet.

I was captivated by images like these all summer, and I forgot about them when my attention turned to the next natural disaster, the hurricanes battering the southeastern US. So at a science writers’ conference this weekend, it was nice to revisit some of these hellish photos, and be reminded of why I love looking at lava.

This scene is a fearsome reminder that this planet is a roiling ball of incandescent lava swaddled in rock, topped by a tomato-skin layer of moisture and life. It is a fragile, living world we inhabit. But there’s another thing about this lava flow. Lots of things are rifting these days. Splitting at the seams. Breaking at the weak points. Coming undone. Just like the Earth in this picture. Continue reading →

Announcing: A Science-Themed Peeps Contest

By: | October 12, 2018

A bunny peep looks through a microscope at a chick peep.

I’m not sure where the idea first came from. I think it was tossed around in a comment section – here on LWON, maybe, or on a Facebook post. And it seemed like a great idea. But it also seemed like a lot of work.

It turns out, if you want to do something that seems like too much work to even bother with, you get Siri Carpenter on board. Siri is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Open Notebook, the website that helps science writers be better at science writing, and as of this weekend she’s the new president of the National Association of Science Writers.

And that’s why I’m proud to announce today: The World’s Finest (and Only…As Far As We Know) Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest! It’s sponsored by The Open Notebook, me (Helen Fields) and my peeps-diorama-making teammates, Joanna Church and Kate Ramsayer.

Head on over to The Open Notebook to read about it, or behold some of our past Peeps dioramas for inspiration: Hamilpeep, Moby Peep, Sweaters for Peepguins, or Mary Anning: Paleontolopeep. Or ask Dr. Google for many, many other Peeps dioramas. We’re not accepting entries until February, which means you have plenty of time to come up with the best idea ever. We look forward to peeping it.

Peep with lab goggles; geologist peep; entomologist peep; astronomer peep

Illustrations: Helen Fields

Green

By: | October 11, 2018

It’s embarrassing enough that it took me 12 years to go to Channel Islands National Park, especially since I see the islands almost every day. Last month, I got on board the dive boat that would take us to the place they call the Galapagos of North America. At last! The captain said something about Dramamine, but I didn’t really pay attention.

The trip takes about two and a half hours. After the first 30 minutes, I stood white-knuckled at the railing until the islands appeared. There were dolphins. I love dolphins! I hardly looked at these ones, even though there might have been three dozen of them. Instead I stared at the horizon as if it was an oncoming lifeboat.

When we finally anchored in a cove. I went downstairs to change into a wetsuit. Another passenger asked how I was doing. “Fine,” I said. Then I started losing my breakfast, and possibly the previous dinner as well. Later, once it was funny, my husband told me he was impressed with the force and the volume that I managed to vomit. At the time, he kindly got me a trashcan and brushed my hair away from my mouth. Continue reading →

Everything Is Terrible So Here Are Some Animals Playing Fetch

By: | October 10, 2018

Dear readers: Everything is terrible. It feels like the beginning of the end of the world. Or maybe the middle of the end of the world. My brain spends its days vacillating between wild panic and stubborn denial. My denial actually takes the form of obsessive online research, which is why I have wasted approximately 49 hours shopping for the perfect twin bed for my toddler. I guess what I’m saying is this: I’ve got nothing for you unless you want a funeral wail or a detailed map of the excruciating decision tree that landed me on a web site called Planet Bunk Beds.

I’m assuming you don’t. And I refuse to subject you to more of my musings on mass shootings or German words that describe my despair. So I will give you this instead: two videos of unlikely animals playing fetch. You have permission to watch them both as many times as you want.

 

An Open Letter to Whoever the Hell Is In Charge of the Green Stuff in My Backyard

By: | October 9, 2018

I began my undergraduate studies in 1995. I completed them in 1999 and moved into a shared apartment overlooking the San Francisco Bay surrounded by a mix of native plants and xeriscaping. Since then, I have lived in South Africa, Santa Cruz, Mexico City, DC, and even spent a year on the road.

Never in all that time have I had to mow a lawn.

There are many things that you do not know you missed until you come back to them. The smell of star jasmine in the summer. A fresh winter rain in the redwoods. The song of a cardinal in spring. English bracken in the fall. It’s like seeing an old friend you haven’t thought about in years.

Lawn mowing is not one of these things. Lawn mowing is the opposite of these things. It’s that thing that you never realized you hated until you had to do it again. It’s like seeing that prick you knew in high school 20 years later and realizing that he’s still a prick.

Now that I have moved from the hemisphere’s largest city to a small suburban community outside Baltimore, I have had to mow my first lawn since Clinton was in office. The last time I fired up a mower, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was still running. Continue reading →

Redux: A Death In the Forest

By: | October 8, 2018
A beautiful old woman
My grandmother, Jean Beck

Note: This post originally appeared in December of 2016.

I find a stick and use it to break up the dry twists of coyote scat I have found on the trail. Shit is nature’s obituary page. In each pile are the traces of lives recently lost.

In this particular excreta I find a sprinkling of little white brittle bones—bird bones. And then I pull out a whole bird’s foot, about the size of a quarter: yellow and reptilian with three forward toes with serious looking claws, and one backward toe, higher up on the ankle, also clawed.

I email a picture to my brother in law, Vanya Rohwer, now the Curator of Birds & Mammals at Cornell University’s Museum of Vertebrates. He guesses it was a Steller’s jay or varied thrush. Then he adds, ‘The jay falling prey to a coyote seems a little dubious though—trickster vs. trickster—and i think the jay would win…. If it is a jay, perhaps the coyote found an old hawk kill and scavenged the foot.”

Continue reading →

Editor’s Note

By: | October 7, 2018

Every week we’ve posted The Last Word, a quick summary of the week’s post.  This is our official notice that we’re not going to do that any more.  If you really want us to, we’ll consider doing it again.  If you want a weekly notice of LWON’s splendid posts, you could if you like sign up for the newsletter:  home page, upper right corner > About Us > scroll down, right panel, Email Newsletter, sign up.  OK?  OK.