I Wish I Could Have One

By: | July 24, 2015
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OMG this saw whet owl. But it belongs in the forest, so I will leave it there.

If you’ve trolled the Internet any time in the last decade, you know that animals and their silly antics are very happening. And no wonder. For the most part the creatures we interact with are adorable and waggish, even if they can be annoying, childish, and smelly. Hell, they sound like husbands. What’s not to love?

Those precious looks and that infantile behavior get to us for good reason: Our brains are programmed to respond to “cuteness”—traits including big eyes (especially when close together), clumsiness, softness and roundness, tinyness, general helplessness—so we’ll keep taking care of our own babies even when they’re screaming and pooping and projectile vomiting simultaneously.  Continue reading →

New Arrivals Daily

By: | July 23, 2015

3481733186_6fdc9f9855_zThe park where I first saw the dog is a patch of green that’s separated from the mountains by several highways and several hills. There’s a coast guard station on one side, houses on the other, a mid-speed thoroughfare bordering its front.

Early one morning, when it was foggy and my eyes were foggy, too, I saw a woman standing at the edge of the grass. I stopped to watch the dog, to see what I was missing. Its ears were pointy, and it was looking back at the woman. Then I watched the woman walk over to a pair of park workers who were bagging the trash. “Have you called animal control about that?” she asked them.

That? I squinted again.

The workers both shrugged. “They put up some signs,” they said. I looked around. Sure enough, there were signs. Coyote in park, they said. Continue reading →

The Ant-Man Diary (Or really Ant-Woman, or actually Ant-Sterile-Female-Workers if we’re being technical about it, which we aren’t)

By: | July 22, 2015

Photo 7

Thursday, July 16, 2015. Interior of a Brooklyn apartment. Deadlines loom. Distractions distract. Timestamps are approximate because time is a flat circle.

4:54 p.m.
Go to the kitchen. Open cabinets. Close cabinets. What did you come in here for? Make tea.

4:55 p.m.
As the water boils, notice ants on the wall, the one across from the teapot. A line of them, maybe five, each a series of tiny black dots in triplicate. From where? The window?

4:55:30 p.m.
A larger dark mass struggles slowly up the wall. What? Lean closer. It is brown, smooth, manufactured. A nutrition pebble: a piece of dog food. Several ants work together to heave it up the sheer face. Marvel at their strength. Continue reading →

After Antman: More Amazing Bug Superhero Movies

By: | July 21, 2015

stick insect

This weekend the movie Ant-Man opened. It’s the latest in the pretty-entertaining crop of movies based on Marvel Comics characters, like Iron Man and The Avengers.

I haven’t seen Ant-Man yet. But I’m not going to let that stop me from telling film executives what their next insect-based superhero movies should be. There’s already been a TV series starring the Tick. Ant-Man has among its characters the Yellowjacket (yipe) and the Wasp (wait, yellowjackets are wasps—sorry, sorry, I’ll tell my inner pedant to shut up).

Here are some other excellent ideas.

You’re welcome, Hollywood. Also, I own these ideas. Take it up with my agent. Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: At the Bench

By: | July 20, 2015

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One sympathizes.  Being a writer, mad or not, isn’t as much fun as in the movies either. It’s just one word after another, the right words in the right order in sentences; and one sentence after another, the right sentences in the right order in paragraphs; and one paragraph after another, the right paragraphs in the right order; and before you know it, you’ve finished a first draft which is nevertheless all wrong and you have to rewrite the whole bloody thing.

_____

 http://abstrusegoose.com/123

The Last Word

By: | July 18, 2015

tambako:8354136751July 13 – 17, 2015

Brian Vastag is disabled by a disease the National Institutes of Health finds unconvincing, or maybe just unimportant. He writes a letter to the director. (67 comments later, the director responds.)

Alcohol-fueled projectile weapons. Smoking volcanos. The latest summer blockbuster? No- it’s the middle school science fair, and Jessa is a judge.

Maybe you know about military war games exercises. But you probably haven’t heard of astronomy war games. Ann shows you how astronomers battle test their predictions.

Did you know that there are trees with their own email accounts? Michelle has some questions for them.

Christie says stop getting swivel-eyed from scrolling aimlessly around the Internet. Sit in a chair and watch as the world goes by.

A day at the science fair

By: | July 17, 2015

science fairOn twenty minutes’ notice, I was recruited as a judge for this year’s middle school science and heritage fair. The numbered displays were set up in rows in the gym, where model volcanoes smoked near replicas of Sir John Franklin’s ships. We judges chose score sheets affixed to a clipboard and roamed the aisles looking for our assigned children.

Some read haltingly from cue cards. Others looked us in the eye and lectured with confidence. One boy took me out to the playground to demonstrate his alcohol-fueled projectile weapon. Continue reading →

Go Occupy Those Forlorn Chairs

By: | July 16, 2015

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It’s summer, and I’ve been thinking of what poet Billy Collins called those, “forlorn chairs/though at one time it must have seemed/a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.” Even situated, as they usually are, to take in the view, it’s hard for those chairs to compete with the attention-grabbing distractions found on our glowing screens.

If you’re not careful, you can spend hours looking at moving pictures and not reading things on your magical device. You start on a favorite news site, clicking through the headlines. Maybe you even open a story or two and read a couple of paragraphs. Then you leave those open tabs to visit a social media site, which sends you on another long string of click and skim. And these on-screen attractions are merely a distraction from your work and there are also the chores of daily life, and before you know it, the day is done and the chairs have sat empty once again.

If ever there’s a season to occupy those lonely chairs, this is it, and here at our farm, my husband and I (and our near-constant stream of summer visitors) are doing our part. Compared to all the shiny things beckoning from our screens, sitting on our front porch and watching the sun move across the sky might seem a little boring. Sure, we’ve got spectacular views of jagged mountains and deep canyons. But sunsets unfold slowly, and sitting still and paying attention requires a kind of patience that’s rarely called upon in the digital age. Which is why it feels so important to practice the art of just being — savoring the moment, for its ephemeral quality.

A few weeks ago, I went mountain biking with a friend along a high ridge near Aspen. Near the end of the ride, just before we dropped back down into the valley, we paused to take in the view. My friend pointed to some massive houses perched along the hillside below us. “I did landscaping work at some of those mansions one summer,” he told me. Continue reading →