I have a friend who is worried about our country. Haw haw. Who am I kidding? All my friends are worried about our country, every single one of them, even the Republicans I know. We are living through an incredibly bonkers and troubling moment: climate change is starting to actively bite us in the ass […]
climate change
I am so angry, so sad. Today I drove my two children to the first day of a weeklong day-camp with a nature theme. They are learning about local species, pressing flowers, that kind of thing. The teachers expected that the kids would spend most of the day outside in nature. Instead, the kids will […]
The Arbor Day Foundation, which I have supported since I became a taxpayer at age 16, has a wonderful program called Tree City USA. To become a Tree City USA, all you have to do is have a tree board, have some kind of community tree ordinance, spend at least $2 per capita on forestry, […]
“Look, our snowman is still there,” I said Monday morning. “Oh!” my daughter said. “It is! Mommy, will it be there for all the times?” I picked her up. “No, it won’t,” I said. “I think it will melt. Remember how we talked about snow melting?” “Oh,” my 3-year-old said. “Okay.” Her disappointment was audible. I […]
When my mother named me Cassandra, she didn’t know anything about Greek mythology. She had never heard of the princess who prophesied the destruction of Troy. But I inherited some of Cassandra’s attributes all the same. I’m a doom-and-gloom kind of girl. My visions of the future involve illness, poverty, and untimely deaths. Each headache […]
The latest issue of the journal Environmental History features an article titled “Chest Hair and Climate Change: Harrison Ford and the Making of ‘Lost There, Felt Here.’” Stop snickering! This is a serious thing. At least, I think it’s a serious thing. Section editor Finis Dunaway acknowledges that while “readers were not expecting to find an […]
Two hundred and one years ago today, a young writer began a very famous story. Every year, it gets a little more relevant. Between two and three o’clock in the morning on June 16, 1816, during a restless night in a villa on Lake Geneva, eighteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had a waking dream. As the moon […]
Between two and three o’clock in the morning on June 16, 1816, during a restless night in a villa on Lake Geneva, eighteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had a waking dream. As the moon shone through the shutters of her room, she remembered, “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had […]