I’ve always been a sucker for the underdog. Or cat, as the case may be. All of my cats have been rescues since I was a kid. The family mythology goes that smuggled a stray kitten in my coat when I was five when we were out of town on a trip. My parents didn’t discover this until we were halfway home. So began my …
It’s a strange feeling realizing without realizing that your whole life’s story has been a lie – one of those optical illusions you’ve spent decades thinking is a bunny and you find out it’s been a duck all along. You’re never able to find your footing, always feeling slightly off-kilter, like an existential inner ear infection. The image above showed up in my inbox last …
On January 31, 2014 the Curiosity Rover sent back the first photos of Earth from the surface of Mars. The earth is that atomic, glowing dot northwest of center in a sea of nothing. Stop for a second to consider just how remarkable this is. Imagine the first time we saw the earth floating in space 45 years ago. On Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 …
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” I’ve sat there with T. S. Eliot, becoming more and more weighed down by the unchanging sameness, choking on cold coffee. It’s a slow unraveling that you’re too tired to clean up. People try to help with all manner of platitudes when you’re in the bleak places of life. “It’s always darkest before the dawn” or …
I was never going to be the kind of woman you’d picture on a fashion magazine spread. For starters, I’m short. For another, I’m not built right. A casual observer can clearly tell I come from a long line of sturdy Germanic peasant stock. We aren’t nobility. We were bred for fields and toil. When the teacher at the local ballet academy looked at me …
