Exciting news: one of my thesis essays, “Scattering Blue,” has been published on Entropy as part of their “The Birds” series! Continue reading
writing
Hello again
It’s been a while. Turns out that grad school takes up an inordinate amount of time. Who would have guessed? But, I’m done! I’m the proud new owner of a Masters of Science in Environmental Studies, with an Environmental Writing concentration. Continue reading
Ohio has always been a place that I am from
An excerpt from a recent paper I wrote for my creative non-fiction environmental writing class. Continue reading
I’m the Paperblog Blogger of the Day!
Paperblog made me their Blogger of the Day!
Look, there’s my face! And my hand, holding an owl. And most of the rest of my upper torso. That would be awkward, if it was just my face and my hand and nothing in between.
Since you may be wondering “What is Paperblog?!?!”, I pulled this from their website for your edification (and edited it a little).
You’re welcome.
What is Paperblog?
Paperblog helps you find quality articles from the blogosphere, providing a participatory media site where talented experts and enthusiasts can share their knowledge and experience.
The best and most relevant articles are not easy to find amongst all the blogs online. Paperblog identified the need to find the best blogs around, offering quality articles to a growing readership.
In the first trimester of 2011, Paperblog International received 10 million regular visitors from throughout the world.
How do we do this?
We call on the skills and collaboration of internet users [like the fabulous Lauren Smith], whose efforts are supported by our editorial team. Using certain criteria, we select great articles and organise them by theme. Through navigation and actions (votes, ranking, key-words) Paperblog users then help us with initial selections and classifications.
The Paperblog editorial team then moderates and carries out a further classification in order to showcase certain articles and select Editor’s Picks. Certain Paperbloggers can also request moderator status and participate more actively in selections. We also establish partnerships with Press Groups and other publishers in order to publish the largest possible amount of articles and achieve our objective of providing quality articles to an increasing audience.
In the future, we even hope to produce this content in print!
In the meantime, we hope to offer the best service possible, and will endeavour to make Paperblog your indispensable source of the best articles from around the web!
Oh, and you can read Paperblog in Brazilian, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. Which is cool.
If you ever want to check out Paperblog but don’t remember how, there is a button on the bottom of every page on my blog. It’s the one with blue lettering, that says Paperblog, and looks like this:
Check it out! Happy reading!
A Postcard from Cambodia
I got this in the mail the other day:
“An elderly Cambodian woman puffs locally grown tobacco.”
This is what the back says:
Smithy,
How’s Boulder? Cambodia and Vietnam are HOT! but the trips have been good. Seems like we got a good bunch of guests on this one (you never know what you’ll get). I’d write more… but I’m too lazy. I’ll think I’ll play some more Plants vs. Zombies 🙂
Max
To summarize:
My friend Max, who works as a naturalist and photograph guide on tours around the world (this trip was up the Mekong River, stopping in Vietnam and Cambodia) sent me a postcard with an old woman smoking on the front to tell me he’s playing a game on his phone.
He always sends the nicest postcards.
At least one of the stamps has a cool bird on it…
An Unfortunate Reality
It is an unfortunate reality for innate idlers that our modern world requires one to hold a job to maintain a sustainable existence.”
— J. Maarten Troost, from the book The Sex Lives of Cannibals
Cape Breton Highlands NP, Nova Scotia, Canada.
One of the best places to spend a morning with a hot mug of chai and a journal.
Wildlife Linkspam for Your Reading Pleasure
If you haven’t been reading Rebecca’s nature blog, Rebecca In The Woods, you should be! She’s a fantastic writer, and always has interesting observations about the natural world. She also has a link to my Cuteness Scale Poll, which if you haven’t taken yet you should! I’ve only had 12 people take it so far, I’m shooting for a much larger sample size before I start doing any stats. We need significant numbers here people, so let’s go!
And in the meantime, also check out Rebecca’s blog. Makes for some great reading!
Waiting for pines
Written while waiting for a friend at Ohio Wesleyan University, Spring 2009.
There are two pine trees, stuck between two buildings, two cement squares of sidewalk. The pines are thin, an arm-span around, or so it seems. No one has hugged them to find out. They are tall, straighter than the warped, old buildings, rising up to bring nature to this between-land, reminders that there is more to the world than brick and stone. At the top, they lean towards each other, branches intertangled in the light.
A girl sits below with a notebook, waiting. Her bench is black, shiny, dark against the pale stone building. She writes, but looks up when a crow rattles in one of the trees. She hears the sound but sees not its maker, the bird sooty with an iridescent powder that makes its feathers gleam in the light. Black is not one color but all colors mixed together, a blended rainbow sitting in the tree, hiding among the green needles.
The girl smiles. She looks up, looking for the crow she knows is there, but sees nothing, just the wind and the sun on the branches and stonework of the buildings. She smiles at the confused look of a passerby, startled by the odd sound.
The girl and the crow, both alone, both waiting, for what? What is there to wait for in this life? Another crow, a partner in sound? A moment? The fleeting pleasure of laughter, the rattle of a crow in the tree tops?
She sits and waits and writes and stares at nothing, at everything, waiting.
The words of the world
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| Vedauwoo, Wyoming 2011 |
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| Washington D.C. 2011 |
I like to think that everything is made up of words. If you looked deep enough, instead of atoms you’d find that everything is a microscopic mass of words, quietly composing themselves into living things. Like atoms, words are always moving, vibrating in place with possibility, giving everything definition and substanance.
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| Utah 2011 |
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| Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina 2010 |
Words are life, they are everything I see and hear. Everything has its own words even if we can’t translate them.
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| Empidonax flycatcher, Erie Pennsylvania 2011 |
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| Glacier National Park, Montana 2009 |
I want to be a translator.
I want my words, the words of me, my essence, to be part of the words of the world. That’s all anyone wants, to be part of their surroundings, to be a thread in the fabric of life, to be part of the whole. If my thread wasn’t here, who would be in my place? Without my words, my noise, what sound would there be? There would be words to fill my gap, but the whole composition would be altered. Or so I choose to believe.
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| Cooper’s Hawk, Erie Pennsylvania 2011 |
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| Zion National Park, Utah 2008 |
We all need to be spoken and read.
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| Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, Dayton Ohio 2009 |
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| New York City, New York 2011 |
Tales From A Wandering Albatross 