How I Won the Internet and Brought Joy to Peepdom

By: | February 29, 2016

The cast of Hamilpeep stands on their diorama stage.

Last week, I was famous on the internet…for dressing colorful marshmallow bunnies in cravats and spreading them to the enthusiastic fans of a hit Broadway musical.

My friends and I made Hamilpeep. Perhaps your cousin shared it with you?

Hamilpeep was our entry into the Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest, in which readers are challenged to depict a scene using marshmallow Easter treats. Two years ago, our creative team–me and my old friends Joanna Church and Kate Ramsayer–made it to the semifinals with a Sweaters for Peepguins diorama. It went mildly viral, with nearly 800 people and some knitting sites sharing the picture on Facebook.

We kind of hoped we could get this one to reach lots of strangers, too…but we had no idea how much it would take off. I invited Kate, who is also a science writer, to discuss the weird, exciting, exhausting experience of having something you made spread through the internet.

HELEN: Hey, Kate, remember that time we made a diorama of a Broadway show and it went viral? Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | February 27, 2016
Helen Fields (American, 1975 - ), Daniela and Her Pet Lion, 2016
Helen Fields (American, 1975 – ), Daniela and Her Pet Lion, 2016

Feb. 22 – 26, 2016

RadioLab doesn’t run climate change stories. Cassie asks her husband, who works for RadioLab, why not.  Cassie’s husband explains about anti-stories.  Cassie says, “what the hell.”

Jennifer was out in the rain and cold, and was on the receiving end of kindness and empathy.  She doesn’t care whether her kind empathizer was just making him/herself feel good.  “Good begets good,” she says.  “It doesn’t matter why.”

Helen set up her easel in front of Rubens’ Daniel in the Lion’s Den so she could copy some lions.  What she ended up with was “Daniela with her blue martini, her pet lion, and the skull of the last man who tried to mess with her.”

Cameron considers a cartoon called the Octonauts, some citizen science called JellyWatch, thinks the octopi and jellies all inhabit a quiet world, and wonders, “What could go wrong?”

Sarah tries to love ticks, a journey that takes her through John Mayer, the U.S. National Tick Collection, and a clearly-crazed entomologist.

 

The day I tried to love ticks

By: | February 26, 2016

6368332077_9e5a91f7c1_zThere’s a certain category of mundane but distinctly unpleasant discovery: The blueberries you just mixed in your oatmeal explode mold into your mouth at 6 a.m. You read that Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucuses. You roll over in bed to find a tick lodged midriff-deep in your shoulder, wiggling about with a tenacity that suggests she plans to spelunk all the way through to your lungs.

“Fortuitously, the antibiotic you take prophylactically for Lyme disease is also the one you take to treat Chlamydia,” the doctor tells me cheerfully a day later when he checks the bruised and swollen bite and gives me a prescription. I stare at him, wondering why he thinks I need this information. It’s unlikely that I’ve got Lyme. Though local incidence is going up, Oregon saw only 44 reported cases in 2014 and Washington generally gets fewer than 30 a year – with just zero to three stemming from local ticks. But the fact that odds are in my favor fails to cheer me as I pluck tick after ever-more-engorged tick from my dog over the next several days. They’re small and hide well in her fur, so unless they pop out of her ears and stroll calmly across her face (some do) I can’t seem to find them until they’re attached and on their way to becoming fat and shiny as coffee beans.

Their emergence is, of course, just as much a sign of spring as the lovely purple grass widows my friend Roger and I had been out looking for when tickmageddon started last Saturday. By tick 10, I started to wonder: Aside from their reputation for transmitting more diseases than any other blood-sucking arthropod, why shouldn’t I find a way to appreciate ticks, too – from a safe distance away? Maybe I could even learn to love them a little bit. Continue reading →

In Bloom

By: | February 25, 2016

6132269694_f449fb720d_zMy kids are really into this cartoon called The Octonauts. It’s about a group of undersea rescuers and researchers (there’s a penguin medic, a sea otter marine biologist, a polar bear captain, among others, plus a group of squeaky-voiced creatures called vegimals.) In one of their (and my) favorite episodes, one of the crew members stays out all night to observe shy garden eels. Others wonder if he’ll be ok all alone out there, but the captain says it looks like it will be a quiet night: “Nothing out there but one little jellyfish. What could go wrong?” Continue reading →

Drawings of Drawings of Lions

By: | February 24, 2016
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 - 1640 ), Lion, c. 1612-1613, black chalk, heightened with white, yellow chalk in the background, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund 1969.7.1
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 – 1640 ), Lion, c. 1612-1613, black chalk, heightened with white, yellow chalk in the background, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund 1969.7.1

Early in the 17th century, two lions lived in the zoo in Ghent. Their names were Flandria and Brabantia. There were probably other lions nearby. Archduke Albert and his wife, Isabella, ruled the region, now in Belgium, and they had a menagerie at their palace. Having a menagerie was the sort of thing extremely wealthy people went in for at the time.

One way or another, the artist Peter Paul Rubens found his way to some live lions, put chalk to paper, and created images. The lions he drew are expressive and realistic, with manes and teeth. (Read more about them in this book.)

Rubens was a very influential painter, with a busy studio in Antwerp, and his lion drawings survived. The British Museum has a couple, and one (above) is here in Washington, D.C., in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. It hasn’t been on display since a temporary exhibit in 1998, but you can make an appointment to visit it.

You don’t have to make an appointment to visit the final work that these lions ended up in, though. It’s Daniel in the Lions’ Den, a massive painting that hangs on the dark-paneled wall of Gallery 45, in the museum’s West Building. Continue reading →

Goodness Gracious

By: | February 23, 2016

shutterstock_319878965Being human is hard. Sometimes we treat each other poorly, putting our own feelings or wellbeing first. Mathematical-game models explain the logic behind selfish acts, suggesting that they often make the best sense. (Remember the Prisoners’ Dilemma?)

But straight-up logic dismisses empathy. The truth is that deep down, and sometimes even up near the surface, we’re actually quite good. Intuitively, we’re generous and cooperative. When given the choice to share and to trust that others will do the same, even if a selfish move promises a better individual outcome, most of us lean toward collaboration and shared gain.

Being kind can be catching. Hearing about a Good Samaritan’s good behavior, for example, may encourage us to do something nice, too. I know I’ve felt that way. As others make positive gestures around me, I often think, What have I done lately that’s not utterly about me? I like to think I’m a giving person, but when I break down my day-to-day actions, I’m sadly lacking in charity.

Friend and writing colleague Ann Finkbeiner recently posted a beautiful essay about how meaningful her friends’ and neighbors’ little generosities were as she mourned her husband’s death. I was part of a group who sent Ann a wool blanket as a gift we hoped would soothe her. She wrote to us when it arrived to say she loved it, that it was the perfect thing to help ease the kind of pain she was feeling. I felt warm inside reading her note, and good about myself for participating—reminding me that even kindness can have a selfish motive. Regardless, that ability to empathize and offer comfort is one capability we humans can be proud of. Continue reading →

Redux: Climate Change: The Anti-Story?

By: | February 22, 2016

This interview with Radiolab’s senior editor (also my husband) focuses on why the show hasn’t done a story on climate change. It originally ran on May 22, 2014. Since then, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad has spoken the words “climate change” on air . . . as part of an episode on nihilism. Progress? (The show is actually one of my very favorites. You should listen.)

climate change

The most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t pull any punches. The globe continues to warm, ice continues to melt at an alarming pace, and the seas continue to rise. Climate change isn’t some distant dilemma. It’s already happening. The science is solid, and the problem is urgent. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri at a news conference in March. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | February 20, 2016

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February 15-19, 2016

Sea glass: a reworked human product returned to the sand from whence it was wrought. There’s less of it now, but you can tell a lot about its origins if you know what to look for.

Designer and writer Matt Steel is working on a simplified version of Thoreau’s Walden, and Michelle supports the experiment.

Ann’s husband died last month, and the empathy she received was an elixir that gave her pain meaning.

It’s disappointing when you’re onto a great story and a new source tells you why it’s not a story at all. Rose argues the lesson to take is to seek out those killjoys on every assignment.

The Arctic Circle is a group that has met monthly for 70 years. I attend for a talk about mercury.

 

Image: Grains of sand from Ireland, candlelit, arranged with an acupuncture needle  Jenny Natusch, www.sandgazer.com