Today, just before Christmas, finishing up my grading and trying to cut down on the caffeine that’s one of the many things spiking my blood pressure this month, I picked up a can of Coke from the cooler in our student union. Those who knew me in grad school, when I drank about a case […]
Read more“The Higgs bison:” beasts, songs, bloops, and the creaturely deep.
The ghostly, homely faces of these beasts floated into my mind earlier last week when I misread a New York Times headline at the top of my webmail page. “Physicists will have to wait a little longer for Higgs Boson,” the tagline read. Of course, I read it first as “Higgs Bison.” But considering what […]
Read moreA little creature, a big mystery.
This week I lost Annie the Cat. What other name could there be for an orange-haired kitty with a hard-knock life? She came to me about four years ago via my family from the cat shelter and before that from years of street life that had taken one eye and most of her teeth; her […]
Read moreBuon giorno, Signor Bianchi:, or, enchanting the world.
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later […]
Read moreCheep-cheep-cheepskate?
So I suppose it was inevitable: when a friend and fellow backyard-gardener told me last week that she and her husband and toddler are moving into a new house on the other side of town with a large yard and a somewhat dilapidated pre-existing chicken setup, I immediately thought: This is the chicken-raising chance I’ve […]
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