Is the drought over?
It’s New Mexico: From the awesome Fuck Yeah NM Roadrunner
Archive of posts filed under the mind category.
Thinking about the big dry
It rained this afternoon at my house. The physics of raindrops, I once learned, means that the largest raindrops falling out the bottom of a thunderhead hit first, and I was sitting in my office at the back of the house writing when I heard them banging onto the metal roof. I went out to …
On the persistence of anti-Semitism
Sad but fascinating work by Nico Voigtlaender of UCLA and Hans-Joachim Voth at CREI in Barcelona looking at the cultural persistence of anti-Semitism. They found that communities that blamed (and killed) Jews during the Black Death of the mid-1300s were more likely to also engage in violence against Jews in the 20th century: Pogroms during …
The secret handshake – a confession
Twenty-one years ago, I did a very bad thing. This is my confession. On the Public Record lists the 1979 California Water Atlas as one of the essential texts, describing it thus: Try to get your hands on one of the old California Water Atlas, put out in the 1970?s. They’re real big, bound in …
Magpies and Poppies
SACRAMENTO – My friend Judy Liddell*, wise in the ways of bird travel, tipped me to be on the lookout for the yellow-billed magpie while I’m in northern California. She knows whereof she speaks. I saw my first one on the roof of my motel this morning as I ventured out for breakfast. They’re everywhere. …
Winds of my childhood
It’s been a weird couple of days in Albuquerque. Last night, driving down from the foothills near sunset, I could see a thick haze building across the city, and by the time I got home I could smell smoke. Turns out it’s blowing up from a wildfire in southeastern Arizona (the Wallow, 106,000 acres at last …
What I did on my spring vacation
What I did on my spring vacation: Lissa and I got the backyard train running (track needed a bit of post-winter sprucing up) We rode the big people train to Santa Fe I got new glasses We got far more work done to the car than I expected Slept in some, but got up early …
LTRR’s New Home
I’m excited to see my friends at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research moving to their new home. (The LTRR people were instrumental and hugely generous in helping me with my book.) But I’ll miss the hilarious stories associated with one of America’s great research institutions stuck inside a football stadium: Great science …
C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about *your* big “But”.
The Los Angeles Times reports that tragedy has struck the dinosaurs of Cabazon. Looming over Interstate 10 on the way to Palm Springs, they are the sort of cheesy roadside attraction that makes this country great, an icon of childhood road trips to the desert. It’s the place Pee-wee and Simone cemented their lasting friendship, …
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