The first woman to get a Ph.D. in oceanography in the United States—and in North America, and, perhaps, in the world—was Easter Ellen Cupp. She received it from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1934. I learned this because I have been reading about one of Cupp’s supervisors, a man named Harald Sverdrup, for a […]
The Last Word
In 2019, a forest caught fire in Sussex, England. This would not have made international headlines, except that the forest in question was Ashdown Forest, the real-life inspiration for Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin’s beloved Hundred Acre Wood. As the fire spread, dry-eyed forest rangers explained to reporters that the blaze and the little […]
A version of this poem appeared in Doubleback Review. The Death of the Lobster I. The death of the lobster will commence quietly. One night, she will awake and find her shell slightly too snug: The lobster’s shell has stopped growing. The lobster has not. Tomorrow, her shell will be tighter; the next day, tighter […]
In regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no other way of accounting for it… many individuals… have been pursued and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species Darwin’s Finches All right, fine, the first few birds Could not […]
Before you read on, we are pleased and thrilled and absolutely overjoyed to introduce New Person of LWON, Eric Wagner! Eric is a fabulous writer and chaser of birds based in Seattle, Washington, who has written for the likes of The Atlantic, High Country News, Audubon, and Orion. He has penned magazine articles about techy […]
September 10-14, 2018 Sarah starts off the week with a Tinder stand-in: a 1972 guide to the outdoors at night. The challenge is identifying just which kind of nocturnal creature you are encountering’ This may not be the same kind of creature you thought you had swiped right on. . . If he’s wearing a […]
August 20-24, 2018 Remember last year when, for a moment, we took a break from earthly concerns and looked up at the sky? Helen returns to her eclipse post from last year, written from the backseat of a car during the I-95 traffic jam. The sun’s last rays shone bright, then winked out, and there […]
May 14-18, 2018 To start the week, Emma has some good news: butterflies are adapting more nimbly to the Anthropocene that some might have thought. This happy ending surprised the researchers. “Our mindset in 2014 was simply to reconfirm the extinction, and we were very surprised to find larvae,” they write. To be fair, ecologists […]