RITUAL

A lone turkey struts on our back porch picking at droves of sunflower seed shells for we have been solacing the persistent birds all winter and now it is spring. The last frozen piles of... Read More

POETRY: The sample is shining

“It’s the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you’re looking at it, you’re looking at something that’s never existed before.” —Isaac Silvera, Harvard University   In the universe of possibility, something new:... Read More

Made in China

I wonder how many millions of small white worm cocoons were unraveled to make his tie. I imagine vast fields of them, confined and shining, hanging somewhere in an overseas warehouse under yellow lights lost... Read More

Life Without a Spine

Taxonomists have described more than a million species ... divided into more than twenty phyla. Of this plethora, vertebrates represent only part of one phylum, and a mere 40,000 species or so. —Stephen Jay Gould... Read More

Calendrical Reform

Constantine’s victory in the Battle at the Milvian Bridge (shown here in part of an unfinished painting by Le Brun) gave him total control of the Western Roman Empire and paved the way for Christianity... Read More