by Jane J. Lee | Nov 29, 2010 | Posts
Many people have heard about the great migrations Monarch butterflies undergo each winter. But I had no idea what they did the rest of the year. It turns out that entire generations live and die before we see the next wave of migrants sweep through California. The...
by Danielle Venton | Nov 29, 2010 | Posts
Among the lush pickings of memorable lines from the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite, one of the best is Kip’s to his brother: “Napoleon, don’t be jealous that I’ve been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I’m training to be a...
by Sascha Zubryd | Nov 28, 2010 | Posts
My boyfriend always tells me video games are good for his mental health. I guess now I have to take him seriously. On November 23, The New York Times Science Times ran an article about research on the therapeutic benefits of virtual interaction. The central idea:...
by Donna Hesterman | Nov 28, 2010 | Posts
In less than 100 days, my husband will be on his way home from Afghanistan. I didn’t say anything to the kids, because it just reminds them that he’s gone. And of course, there is always the possibility that the plan will change. Still, it’s a...
by Keith Rozendal | Nov 28, 2010 | Posts
One day in the late 1980s, my friend S’mores and I were thrashing a rad quarter-pipe (skateboarding) at his house in the suburbs of Houston. S’mores’ Dad, responsible for a fleet of company cars, was reading about cleaning up spilled oil. He had put a research report...
by Susan L. Young | Nov 27, 2010 | Posts
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I went to the iFly Indoor Skydiving Vertical Wind Tunnel in the East Bay for his birthday. I was a little nervous on our way there, but it turned out to be pretty easy and a lot of fun. After a quick lesson on body position, visitors get...
by Sandeep Ravindran | Nov 27, 2010 | Posts
photo © 2008 hojusaram | more info (via: Wylio) I was reading the closing chapters of Zinsser’s “On Writing Well”. Zinsser has an uncanny knack of pointing out things that I hadn’t thought of before, but that seem obvious once he says them. His chapter on...
by Melissae Fellet | Nov 26, 2010 | Posts
We went on a class outing to the Santa Cruz Harbor last week. Our goal: Find crab fishermen and learn about their catch during the first two weeks of crab season. Biggie, a friendly sport fisherman in the bait shop, declared himself our teacher and gave us a lesson...
by Catherine Meyers | Nov 26, 2010 | Posts
I love pie, both the baking and the eating of it. I also love pumpkin, and so Thanksgiving always provide a wonderful opportunity to combine my two loves into one glorious dish. This morning, I happily pulled out my pumpkin-pie-making ingredients and started the...
by Danielle Venton | Nov 23, 2010 | Posts
My mother gave me this wonderful old slip of paper hand typed by my grandmother many decades ago. It is a set of guidelines for “Writing Stories that Sell.” The advice proffered is still valid, so I wanted to share. The charming exception is the section detailing how...
by Jane J. Lee | Nov 22, 2010 | Posts
I started today with a plan. I would go into my internship and finish up an article about robots that never showed up. Then I would write a short piece about a local girl scout troop that won a robotics competition. But, an hour into my day, I got tasked to write...
by Nadia Drake | Nov 22, 2010 | Posts
Ben Franklin had a thing for turkeys, and thought they — not the bald eagle — ought to be the national symbol: “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides,...
