The morning starts with a fluttery feeling in your midsection, somewhere between a stomachache and seeing the object of your junior-high crush in the hallway between classes—excited, but kind of nervous, too. Then the anxiety dissipates until it’s just a low electrical hum buzzing through your limbs, making you want to get up and spaz [...]
Archive for the ‘Nature’ category
Unexpected Cosmologies
I’m a believer. I believe in numbers. In textures and lines. I believe in shadow and light. How the grade of darkness is sometimes tied to the word value. I believe in beginnings. In origins. I believe in ruptures and faults. In borders and intersections. I believe in pattern and chaos. Sitting in a restaurant [...]
Full fathom five
Growing up on the coast of southern California, I had a close relationship with tide pools, tracking hermit crabs, sticking my fingers in every anenome, and arranging swirls of shells for classroom projects. Maybe that intimate view of these miniature seas warped my perspective on the ocean, somehow preventing me from looking out and appreciating [...]
Ghost plant
Walking on a country road in Barre, Massachusetts, last week, I came across what looked like a bunch of mushrooms growing under some dense trees: They were ghostly white and clumped in little groups the way toadstools are often clumped. I figured they must be the fruiting bodies of some underground mass of fungus. But [...]
Stormy weather
Spring has been strange and unpredictable in the nation’s capital, providing a sympathetic backdrop to the turmoil of the economy and the political world. Weeks of rain are followed by a few scorching days, the occasional perfect spring weekend, and then days, or rather nights and early mornings, of near hurricanes with bolts of lightning, [...]
The big blues marble
I first heard about global warming in the early ’80s. It was reported on by a local newscast, probably WPIX. I remember the jolly, post-story wrap up: So New York might be as warm as Florida one day? Wow, that sounds great! To recap our top story: beloved Yankee, Reggie Jackson, was traded to the [...]
April is not the cruelest month…
…March is. Good riddance, I say. As Dave Foley’s character on NewsRadio once remarked, “Winter in Wisconsin is the nicest six months of the year!” (He was being sarcastic, of course—about the nice part, not the six months part, which is all too true.) As I write this, we’re shivering under four inches of fresh [...]
This I believe (pessimist edition)
I believe that this is just the beginning. I believe that the economy will get worse and worse, as housing prices keep falling and unemployment keeps rising and corporations keep failing. I believe that, at some point, not only will it be difficult to find a job, it will be impossible—in fact, eventually the very [...]
New Orleans, redux
With a nod to Wendy’s excellent photo essay from 2007, here are a few scenes from New Orleans, circa December 2008. The French Quarter: A sliding levee between the Mississippi and Jax Brewery: Random sights in the Garden District: And on our way out of town, views of eastern New Orleans, still bearing the scars [...]
