Redux: The Knowledge

By: | May 29, 2014

 This first ran on Nov. 18, 2011, before Sally took indefinite leave.  We just know you’re missing her so here’s the next best, the redux Sally.

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A transatlantic phone call ended badly the other day. “You can just turn left at the next light,” I heard my friend tell the New York cab driver over a crackly 3500-mile connection from London. After some muffled but dramatic escalation, she was back. “Can I call you back?” she said. “I just got kicked out of a taxi.”

The trouble was that the driver wasn’t familiar with the destination (“even though it’s the middle of Brooklyn!” she yells) and refused her street-by-street directions. “No, no, just get out,” he mumbled, refusing to make eye contact or budge the car.

I had just found out about The Knowledge, so it was hard for me to resist being sanctimonious: this would never happen in London. Continue reading →

Confessions of an Artifact Hunter

By: | May 28, 2014

Maze-Walker

I once found a beautiful pot, an ancient red seed jar tucked beneath a boulder in the desert. By ancient, I mean pre-Columbian, probably 800 years old. It was hidden along the rubble-choked slope of a canyon in Southeast Utah. The way it was placed, seated in shade and red blow-sand next to a once hand-polished metate, you could tell someone put it there to keep it safe, not to be seen or worn away by the weather, probably planning to return for it. The return never happened.

I used to walk for weeks at a time looking for things like this, diamonds in the deep country, what is left of archaeology after more than a century of the general pillaging of artifacts, culprits ranging from museum expeditions to black market pothunters. My solution is leaving objects where I find them. It’s certainly not everyone’s solution, but it is mine. I wrote a book on the dilemma, “Finders Keepers.”

Upon finding this seed jar, I spent hours peering into the shadowed underside of its tilted, protective boulder. I reached out from time to time to touch the slowly decaying ceramic finish, as did my friend who was with me for the discovery.

My friend wanted it moved, not to take it home, but to get it into an even more protected space. I said no, insisting it remain exactly where we found it. The debate continued intractably into the next day. We’ve got rules about this kind of thing. Continue reading →

Gold Stars

By: | May 26, 2014

ChildFlag_shutterstock_50700037Go ahead and celebrate today’s holiday with a grill and a swill or a trip to some big box store to buy discounted appliances. Unless you’re part of the other one percent — the tiny fraction of Americans who served in the military during the long wars fought since September 11, 2001 — Memorial Day may not feel personal to you.

But if you’re an American, it should. The 6,809 service members killed and 52,010 wounded in nearly thirteen years of war made these sacrifices on your behalf. They gave their lives so that you could go about your way. A growing gap between military and civilian populations has created an easy out for those looking for a reason not to engage in issues of foreign policy and military action. “People say, ‘You volunteered. You knew what you were signing up for,’” one veteran told me recently. That may be true.

Yet there’s a population of innocents who shoulder the burden of military service without ever having made the choice — military kids. These children must accept that their parents’ lives belong to the military first. No matter how dedicated and engaged the parent is, family obligations will always come after military ones. Deployed fathers can’t make it home for their children’s births, mothers or fathers miss a child’s first day of school or graduation. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 24, 2014

alice51wonderland3619May 19-23, 2014

You might think a week that begins with an essay about the chessboard and then another about White Alice would have a Lewis Carroll theme. You’d be wrong.

Cameron puzzles over how the knight moves. Craig can see Russia from his muskox, sort of. Guest DeLene Beeland sings the postpartum blues. Speaking of beeland…is what Stephen Ornes spends his own guest post doing. And then you’ve got your bees-and-birds: Cassie sits her husband down for the talk, or at least the science journalists’ version–how to make climate change sexy. (Spoiler alert: You probably can’t.)

As for those of you who now need a fix of Lewis Carroll: Drink me.

Guest Post: Archimedes in the Fence

By: | May 23, 2014

Closeup of a modern-day ArchimedesAccording to ancient historians, Archimedes spent the last moments of his life drawing figures in the dirt, so deeply entranced with the pleasures of geometry that he failed to notice the bloody pillage of Syracuse right outside his door. Aloofness, it’s tempting to conjecture, was his fatal flaw. By many accounts, he paid scant attention when a Roman soldier barged in and demanded that the old, prolific genius identify himself. Archimedes didn’t state his name or plea for his life. Instead, he responded with some version of, “Please, don’t disturb my circles.” At which point the Roman soldier ran him through with a sword. (Valerius Maximus adds a dramatic flourish to his account of those last seconds: “… and with his blood he confused the lines of his art.”)

So ended Archimedes.

I can’t help but see Archimedes’ ghost—his circles, his aloofness—in a violent, natural drama that plays out every year in my backyard. (Anthropomorphism should probably be reserved for children’s books and special occasions. I claim the latter in this case.)

The drama begins with the return of the carpenter bees. These slow and steady creatures resemble obese bumblebees with bulbous, shiny abdomens. They’re big and big-eyed, and they can do something almost no
human can do without tools: Make a perfect circle.

Continue reading →

Climate Change: The Anti-Story?

By: | May 22, 2014

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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.

Yet most Americans don’t seem to be all that concerned. According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, only 40% cited climate change as a major threat to the US. And even fewer — roughly a third — listed global warming as a top priority for Congress and the White House.

So what gives? Why aren’t people getting the message? Are we* — the science journalists –delivering it wrong? Perhaps we need more stories, and better storytellers.

“Why don’t you do something about climate change?” I asked my husband, Soren Wheeler. He’s the senior producer of Radiolab, a crazy popular science program that tells some of the most compelling stories on the airwaves.

“Because,” he said, “climate change is the anti-story.”

Naturally, I asked him to explain. Here is an edited version of the conversation that ensued over burgers and beers**.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: My prism of postpartum depression

By: | May 21, 2014

IMG_5563The moment of my son’s birth is seared into my brain, but fogginess reigns in the aftermath. Our hospital stay is a series of blurry memories: broken sleep, a jaundiced and hungry newborn, and me crying while scarfing down a few forkfuls of food in my spare moments alone. Once home, I didn’t immediately feel the deep bond that most mothers develop with their infants. He was so fragile, I felt unequipped to care for him — but what kind of mom feels that lack?

I judged myself against other mothers. It seemed everyone cared for their babies better than did I. They had secret ways to jiggle a baby asleep and entire repertories of nursery songs at the ready. I cared for my son, but something was off. Where was my satisfaction? Where was our joy?

Continue reading →