N is for Norman, eaten by a lionness

This post originally appeared in March 2012. “It is with the deepest sorrow that I have to inform you of the death of your son Norman. He died after an encounter with a lion near the Keito River in Portuguese West Africa 10/5/15. He made a very gallant fight and killed the lion with his […]

Catch me if you can’t

Recently I had cause to doubt someone’s credentials in a situation where credibility was key. Not to worry, I thought, That’s what university registrars are for. You simply call them up and verify that said person is a graduate, right? Not right. It turns out—and maybe everyone else already knew this—you can’t verify a job […]

Counting Sheep

I’m currently reading anthropologist Alice Roberts’ book The Celts: Search for a Civilization. It’s fascinating to see how she goes about reconstructing a pre-literate culture that coexisted with the much louder (historically speaking) Romans. One way to form a picture is through the ancient stories that rise again in modern contexts and can be traced […]

Sam Sells Seashells By the Seashore

This originally appeared in 2015. There’s a popular myth about Dutch last names that goes like this: When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands and instituted a family name registry, only the upper classes had such names already in use. A significant subset took the opportunity to protest foreign rule by registering under silly names like “Born […]

Sci Fi lives on in the people it created

What’s something you used to love but have lost your feeling for? For me, in a world that looks a lot like science fiction, I have trouble with the speculative novels I used to love. I’ve suspended my disbelief already, even in real life, and I shrug at the magic imagined in these stories. This […]

Redux: La Vie Souterraine

“The year is 1994. We are all living underground.” So begins a 1960s movie my friends and I howled about in the year 1996, watching a large cast of extras in metallic bell-bottoms surging purposefully through tunnels. I am re-posting this post from seven years ago because I can’t remember writing it. I absorbed not […]

LWON is 10 Today!

It’s our 10th anniversary! Today! We’re celebrating all week with postcards we wrote to our 10-years-younger selves. Today Jane, Heather, Jessa, and Ginny hint at good things to come. Jane C. Hu Dear 2010 Jane,Welcome to the west coast. You, an indoor cat, have come here purportedly to study cognition, but your time will become […]

Eloise at the Château

For two years, I have felt like Eloise in the beloved 1950s children’s classic of the same name. A sudden need for shared office space led me to a reasonably priced desk in downtown Ottawa, but the exact location stunned me. Much like the entitled Eloise who lives in New York’s Plaza Hotel, I also […]