An unsung advantage of partnership is not having to be quite so on top of things all the time. Liberated from the relentless need to be competent, you can think more interesting thoughts. This post was originally written a few months into the pandemic, and my own thinking was so discombobulated I have very little […]
Miscellaneous
I really did think they were sunflowers. The seedlings had the same broad, happy green leaves. And I had planted sunflowers there. I think I planted sunflowers there? This is my problem with gardening. I start with enthusiasm and good intentions, and then somewhere I lose my drawings that I’ve made of what seeds went […]
For a recent edition of Smithsonian Magazine, I wrote a retrospective on the life and career of Marie Fish — ichthyologist, bioacoustician, and epitome of nominative determinism. Fish spent decades recording marine animals in her laboratory and at sea, and revealed that, far from being the “silent world” described by Jacques Cousteau, the ocean was as raucous as a […]
[This post ran some years back. I’ve been thinking again about food and gut health and all the bad stuff we do to ourselves, so I thought I’d re-run it. I mean, eat what you like. But be mindful of all the things.] —– Here’s what I remember eating as a kid: Oscar Mayer bologna […]
It’s hard to pay attention. It’s hard to be in the moment. It’s very easy to walk around with your face buried in the internet. I’ve started making a game of it – when I’m standing at a busy street corner, how many of the other walkers are staring at their phones? When I’m coming […]
It’s been a rough week for wildlife in my neighborhood. Here are some of the things that happened: Thanks for letting me gently weep. ——————- Sad pics by the author. I left out the diced worm because it looked like a backyard crime scene photo.
This post ran in 2015, and it remains the coldest experience in my life. Put on something warm and enjoy. In the winter of 2014, most of North America was buried in an unusual cold period. The jet stream had hemorrhaged in early January and the Polar Vortex that usually sits atop the hemisphere like […]
These are just some of the many ways to fail at a long-term game even as you succeed in the short-term ones that make it up. It turns out this is a common mistake that arises because we live in a non-ergodic world. It’s a real problem in our decision making. You might not have […]