An archiving expert and a dramaturg on the radical act of preserving your bits and bobs, why context matters, and the magic of a suitcase in the attic ...

The Course Writing Rhizomatically Rhizomes are the runners that many plants and trees (like sassafras, elder, Solomon’s seal, ferns, and mayapples) send forth as they spread outward from a “mother” ...

AS THE WEATHER GETS WARMER each year, something unavoidable happens: the insects come back out. While some find the bugs ...

A CEMETERY SEEMED AN ODD PLACE to contemplate the boundaries of being. Sandwiched between the campus and the interstate, this old burial ground is our cherished slice of nearby nature where the long ...

Strict vegans aside, we all have our unwritten rules for what constitutes fair wear of animal products, based on some murky mix of convention, ethics, and simply what feels right. My own current ...

ONE WEEK IN HEAVEN THE CHINESE CHARACTER for silkworm (蚕) is composed of the symbol for sky (天) and the symbol for worm (虫). They are heavenly worms. China’s Sichuan Province, a damp, landlocked ...

PRIVATE CARS WERE RELATIVELY SCARCE in 1919 and horse-drawn conveyances were still common. In residential districts, electric streetlights had not yet replaced many of the old gaslights. And within ...

IN OUR FREE TIME, WE DESTROY TREES. Hundreds of them by now. Five years ago, soon after I bought the place, I gave my partner a Husqvarna 450 Rancher for Christmas. Since then, he’s had to replace the ...

An exploration of animal intelligence and the incredible mind of the octopus.

I knew already that this neighborhood—Kensington—and particularly the ten-block radius around Kensington and Allegheny, is, according to my local news site, Billy Penn, “the aortic valve of the region ...

Fred Bahnson: With Sun House you bring your love of Eastern wisdom literature together with your love of Western lands and peoples, creating a genre you call the “Eastern Western.” Your characters ...

The Religion An amalgamation of West African/Nigerian Yoruba cosmology, Catholicism, and the nineteenth century French practice of spiritism, the complex Afro-Cuban religion Santería has been ...