News
From Birdsong to Sheep's Eyes: How Nature Helps Us Tell Time
2+ hour, 31+ min ago (831+ words) We used to tell time by shadows shrinking or the midday glow over a mountaintop. We called a phase of darkness "cockcrow" and named lively flowers for when they open and close. When working, we may have synchronized a task…...
In Defense of Pet Portraiture as a Worthy Art Form
4+ week, 2+ day ago (134+ words) There I surveyed the dried leaves in the empty fountain and counted the dwindling flowers on a bush. The class met once per week, and we each gave an update on our plot: dirty gum flattened on asphalt, the introduction…...
Terry Tempest Williams on the Plight of the Monarch Butterfly
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (860+ words) Tell me what supernatural life / Is painted on your wings, the poet Homero Aridjis writes of monarch butterflies. He knows the migrations, the flaming butterflies, from his childhood when they return each year to the pine and oyamel forests near…...
How Los Angeles and Chicago Came to Appreciate Their Coyote Neighbors
3+ mon, 2+ week ago (255+ words) Still, coyotes are a kind of wolf. Living in our midst, are they a danger to us? Coexisting with coyotes just requires paying attention, the way we've done around predators for a couple hundred thousand years, after all. As Mike…...