Stories

Do you care about cairns? I do. Learn why in my upcoming newsletter about rocks. What are cairns, anyway? How did they come about, and why do they sometimes look like Sesame Street or Star Wars characters? And, I saw these characters with my guide in Peneda-Gerês...

Have you lost something and found yourself? Among the many things that I lost during my seven decades of living, so far, is a guitar. And an island. I reveal my experiences losing these things and navigating life afterwards in my latest Substack newsletter, out now:...

I started a not-so-secret society. Wanna join? My film-making partner and I learned about a group of 18th century scientists who would travel by the light of the full moon near Birmingham, England to discuss their inventions, questions, and curiosities. They called...

The sharp crack of a trio of muskets pierced the air one fine July morning in Thomaston, Maine. I watched a small group of Revolutionary War reenactors as they approached, packing gunpowder into the muzzles, signaling that something of consequence was about to occur....

I began to appreciate the process of making friends as a long-term endeavor that couldn’t be short-circuited. You can’t “speed-date” a new friend. Friendships I had developed over the past came from shared stories and experiences, from being vulnerable together to...

Last month, I paid someone to drop my daughter and me in the middle of the mountains for eight days with no phone or map. It was an exhilarating international adventure where we wouldn’t even know where in the world - or which mountains we’d be dropped in - until we...

During the ‘80s, I continued to accompany my husband to tech conferences and continued to always see a row of Soviet “scientists” furiously taking notes in the back. To satisfy my curiosity, I began to learn about how the Soviets developed their own technology and how...

Photo by: University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability The problem with old people is that they act as if they’ve seen it all. I see that, too. Earth Day is upon us and social media fills our screens with calls to action against all sorts of...