…And now for something completely different! This past weekend, my family gathered in Capon Springs, West Virginia, to celebrate my mother’s 70th birthday. She asked for an unusual birthday gift – an original poem from each member of the family. Writing poetry isn’t something most of us do, but my mom was an English teacher … Read more
This is the second Andrea Wulf book I’ve read in the past month. It’s a biography of a great naturalist and popularizer of science and travel writing, who at the same time is largely forgotten in the modern English speaking world. Alexander von Humboldt’s intellectual impact is vast, Wulf argues, leading to everything from Darwin’s … Read more
My friend Joe Cancellare knows that I like cartoons, and that I even draw a few cartoons myself. He surprised me a couple weeks ago with a gift of a book – a new memoir by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. This was a real treat – it explores (a) the idea of how … Read more
Callan reviews Bob Hazen’s latest book, “The Story of Earth,” a history of our planet that emphasizes the coevolution of minerals and life.
A photo of the iconic dune cross-beds at Zion National Park gets the Bentley Annotation treatment, and comes out looking like a stained glass window. Take a look at both photos and see if you can answer the question, “Which way was the wind blowing?”
The Smithsonian Castle is one of the most striking buildings on the National Mall in Washington, DC. One reason for this is its distinctive architecture, but a second reason is its color: a bright, deep red. This color comes from the rock from which the Castle constructed: the Triassic-aged “Seneca Sandstone,” a part of the … Read more
One thing that’s 100% worth doing if you find yourself visiting Natural Bridge, Virginia, is to pop in for a visit at Foamhenge, an art installation a few miles away. Foamhenge is a full-scale replica of Stonehenge, made of styrofoam (covered in gray latex paint). It’s a few years old now, so it’s begun to … Read more
My neighbor, the artist Diane Artz Furlong, photographed these extraordinary caterpillars in her garden last week. With her permission, I’m reposting the photos here… Diane writes that, Just when I thought I was done with the Japanese beetle onslaught (not!) I find these guys on my rose bush. I would never have found them, though, … Read more
Saw this educational graffiti on the campus of Carleton College a few weeks ago: Seems like a great way to get students to grasp the relative spans of geologic time.