In the winter of 2013, I went on a not-very-successful reporting trip to Switzerland. I was writing about a solar airplane, the Solar Impulse, and got way less access to the project than I had expected. But there was one highlight. After my odd tour of the hangar where the plane was being built, outside […]
Helen
This week LWON reminds you of all the mundane, unimpressive, uncelebrated things that are nevertheless worth celebrating. The advice of early mentors often has unexpected weight; we keep following it long after we’ve grown up and become mentors ourselves. Helen’s first mentor in journalism, the excellent Joanne Silberner, gave her advice about the complex and […]
Back in April, somebody at the community garden got ambitious. Weeds usually grow pretty profusely around the edges of the garden. But on one Thursday in April, when I walked by on my way to work, the weeds in the corner I pass every day had been completely turned over, in preparation for vegetables. I […]
Last week in Berlin I saw an old friend. Well, several. My college friend Erika, a historian of science who is wrapping up a sabbatical there, and I visited the Museum für Naturkunde – the natural history museum. And there Erika put me in touch with another old friend: Knut the polar bear. Knut was […]
I originally wrote about getting pooped on by birds on October 23, 2014. Recent events call for an update. 1. Washington, D.C., 2004 or so A bench around a circular planter, with a tree in it. I was eating my lunch. I felt something on my arm. We call it poop, but the stuff that […]
I learned a lot of languages in my teens and 20s. I say “learned,” but don’t expect fluency. You shouldn’t try to have a very complicated conversation with me in any of them today. But there have been points in my life when I had dear friends with whom I only spoke Japanese or Norwegian. […]
I love snow and cold (although I hate ice) and, for the most part, this winter did not come through for me. But there was one exception: a blizzard in late January that dumped a couple of feet of snow on Washington. I ran around in the snow with dogs and did snow angels and […]
I wrote this post two years ago, when I worked full-time at home and my desk was super messy. Right now I am sitting at that same desk and there are four pieces of paper on it, three of which are the pages of one bill. Reasons for the change include: Marie Kondo changed my […]