Missing Winter?

As the first snow flurries begin to fall, I rush to put out extra seed in my yard. Within seconds, a junco appears beneath the feeders, as if beamed in from Canada.

In the Details

My close observation of asters — call it a fixation or fascination if you will — has allowed me to find out a number of things as I took breaks from my equally obsessive attention to this year’s critical election.

A Different Fall on Campus

Environmentalists have been playing desperate defense since the 2016 election brought a trifecta of right-wing, anti-environmental, indeed, anti-progressive forces to power

North to No Avail

We have headed somewhere north in summer for many years – in search of loons and moose and nesting warblers, and cool breezes, as we kayak or canoe where eagles soar and you need a campfire beneath the stars.

True Spring is Late This Year

True Washington spring weather is late this year. Despite new, record CO2 atmospheric concentrations of 410 ppm in April and warmer than average global temperatures in March and April, the cherry blossoms and warm, sunny weather lagged behind schedule.

Unsilent, Unsettled Spring

Within forty-eight hours, the temperature in Bethesda leapt into the 70s in the midst of February. The Easter Bunny emerges over a month early, bounding from beneath the deck in our neighbor’s yard, sniffing and looking for things to nibble.

Rachel Carson and Nuclear War?

Rachel Carson, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the best known, environmentalist of the twentieth century, was deeply opposed to nuclear testing and nuclear war from at least 1946.

The Fallen Leaves

Nat King Cole’s old melody, “Autumn Leaves,” is about sadness and loss, lost love, and the waning of summer’s warmth. “Since you went away the days grow long. And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song.” But are those lovely leaves “of red and gold” gone forever? Where do they go after all? Is winter an […]

Remember the Monarchs

Rachel Carson knew she was dying as she wrote fondly to her friend, Dorothy Freeman, of their time together. “But most of all, I shall remember the Monarchs.”

Trump, Rachel Carson, War and the Environment?

President Trump has casually threatened nuclear war before and now has promised formally in a chilling speech at the United Nations to “totally destroy” North Korea if need be — presumably by using nukes.