One of the finest editors I’ve ever known has died, and I’m heartbroken. David Corcoran was my first editor at the New York Times, but over the 12 years that I knew him he also became an advocate and a friend. David was kind and supportive like a good dad. His tenor let me know […]
On Writing
By now you’ve probably heard about author Naomi Wolf’s fateful radio interview on the BBC. Perhaps you’ve heard the interview itself, though if not, you might want to skip it—especially if you’re a writer who traffics in facts and has ever had to cite one. It’s gruesome listening. Wolf was publicizing her book about the […]
When a society uses a suite of technologies that a single adult can master in his or her lifetime—building a house from scratch, farming, spinning cotton, making medicines, having babies, hunting, fishing, singing and dancing—then it is possible to attain a high level of competency in nearly every major task an adult may be called […]
Oh spring — a time for renewal. I’m finally (mostly) home from book tour, and I’ve been taking a little break from the grind to breathe in and focus my attention on things that replenish my creative energy and make me feel connected and fully present in my place. Perhaps the most soul-nourishing thing I’ve […]
I think I’m in the primitive garden. That’s the name of this garden, a weird fairy hollow situated near the border of the weird fairy artist ranch where I’m staying in Tucson. I am looking north. I can tell because the sun is at my back. In front of me there is a small trapezoidal […]
It just happened again. My Twitter mentions blew up, because someone posted a tweet soliciting names of favorite female science writers after most of the students in a science communication class couldn’t come up with a single one. I have no doubt that the tweet was well-intentioned, but all I could think is, oh no, […]
Google is mighty, everybody says so. Like, nobody needs a library for anything. Like, my flight was delayed and the airline’s app was informative but needed 68 clicks so I googled the airline and the flight number, and Google not only told me first click straightup what the current delay was but also the expected […]
I had some trouble with the state of the world in 2018. As a result, I’ve been having trouble figuring out what to write for this blog. (I wrote about this problem in October.) Christie suggested “beginnings” as a topic for today’s blog post, and I noodled around a while on that. But when I […]