Featured Posts
Hosting Myself Out of a Party
What if you hosted a party and nobody came? Or worse, only one person came, so you had to put on a brave face for hours until the event was over and you could have a good, long cry?
It would be damn tempting to never have a party again. Or at least not a Soulard Mardi Gras parade pre-party.
But at some point during the long year between one Lent and the next, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there was another perspective on why people who had partied with me in the past didn’t return.
Trusting Your Life to Golden Coils of Grass
Does it take courage to be the first one to cross this one-of-a-kind bridge, re-woven from grass every June? Or does it take trust in the craftsmanship of one man, descended from five centuries of bridge-builders? I’m completely fascinated by this story from Eliot Stein’s book “Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive.”
Nature v Nurture x Two
This father was prepared for his role in nurturing twin “mini-beasts” when his daughters made their appearance on April Fool’s Day 2024. What he wasn’t prepared for was the realization that they were by nature already distinct from each other. It led him to an insight that shook up everything he had believed before: “Our greatest work as humans is to reveal that vitality, that exceptionalism in ourselves and to inspire the same in others.”
Whale Watching and Whispering
“I had the thought: I wonder if anyone heard me? I dove down again and listened. Someone had. A voice, faint, plaintive yet serene, reached through the water. From maybe a hundred yards away, or a hundred miles—no way to know—but its reverberance was stirring. I went up for air, dove down and tried to imitate what I’d heard, waited, and heard a response—or was it an inquiry? A pretty dull conversation for the whale, no doubt, as I just tried to repeat what I heard, but we sustained this back-and-forth for the length of my mostly underwater, sounding swim back.”
Reporting from the Squirrel Cooking World Championship
This story from Eater about the World Champion Squirrel Cook Off is my favorite kind of writing: quirky, fun, but ultimately very respectful of the unique people and traditions that make our world so wonderfully diverse.
‘Tis the Season for Fireflies and Glow Worms
An Australian journalist details his search for the first fireflies of the season in a New South Wales park in 2023. His guide is a bioluminescence chaser who also points out glow worms during their excursion.