Category Archives: Global Warming

Mulch Ado About Nothing

I promised myself in January I’d devote the first comment of each month to the world immediately around me.  Today I feel obligated to say something about last night’s presidential debate.  I’ll try, perhaps foolishly, to do both.  Hang on. It’s rained every day of October, so far.  Right now it’s relatively warm and non-relatively […]

Can You Recommend Journalism as a Career?

Later this evening, I’m supposed to speak to a class of college students.  My topic is “environmental journalism.”  I suspect one reason I received this invitation is a similar talk I gave to journalism students last year, in which my topic was “how to make money selling out as a journalist.”  What I said then […]

The Grandkids

It’s mid-September and scientists are floating around the Arctic, something far easier to do this year than ever before.  Other scientists are far away, peering at satellite photos and maps.  They’re all doing the same thing: trying to gauge the minimum extent of the north polar icecap. This is the week every year when the […]

The Second Spring

Some gardeners refer to September as “the second spring.”  The heat and dry dust of summer has passed, rain returns and fast-growing plants like lettuce can be sown and brought to table before the first frost does them in.  Or so we’re led to believe.  A phrase from Grace Paley, “green as green September” returns […]

Keep Language Meaningful

Car owners in Vermont are required to have license plates on the front of their car(s).  There are exceptions.  In 2009, drivers could display a Lake Champlain 400th anniversary plate.  (The lake is actually much older, but it’s been 403 years since the white folks showed up and we tend only to celebrate ourselves.) Now […]

Be Cool

Ha, ha, ha, how stupidly prescient I am.   Three weeks ago in this space, I wrote that bicycling is easy on the joints (until I crash).  Friday, I crashed.  Broke my right wrist.  It’s my seventh (I think), most minor (I’m sure) broken bone and my third broken wrist from bike crashes (the first two […]

No Environmentalists Need Apply

Many people on the political scene are anticipating Mitt Romney’s vice presidential choice in a state of high agitation and none are more agitated than I.  Four years ago next month, I had just left the dentist’s office with a face full of novocaine when my boss’s boss called me on my cell and screamed, […]