Shelter in Place: Day 10

Today, beloved readers, we break into the double digits. Today, I will share a confession. As a child and a young person, I would often wish, "Oh, if only something BIG would happen in my lifetime." I looked at the writers I considered to be "serious" writers, and saw them writing to the catastrophes of …

In Defense of Optimism

I entered into a conversation recently that began around Kafka and ended somewhere to the left of me defending the concept of hope in the face of what was purportedly a deterministic universe. I don't know that I believe the universe has been determined, and even if it were, I don't necessarily think that excludes …

Why the DAPL?

Yesterday, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to pass the final easement allowing for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). I've been thinking about this as momentum builds behind the pipeline. The executive order, the banks that continue to fund it, and the large proportion of the country that view themselves as unaffected …

Seeking Position: Becoming a Small Flightless Bird

Laura A. Birdmiller Bird bird bird bird, #14 Fitchbird, WI 53713 Email:kiwi@kiwi.com Overview: • Passionate team-bird, bird-oriented and willing to bird hard. • Slow bird, unable to fly. • Small and almost round. • Committed to eating seeds and not flying. Education: August 2011- June 2015 Carleton Birdege Northbird, MN GPA: 6 lbs of seed, …

The Last Time I’m Going to Talk About Comps

As a junior, I made the vow, you know, the ultimately pathetic vow: "I'm not going to be one of those seniors." One of those seniors who make a five letter word into a four letter one and then proceed to throw it around until the cover comes off and you're left holding a wobbly ball of …

Remnants

It's difficult to miss something that you've never known. This was driven home to me recently when I met my great aunt Hulda. I knew that I had a great aunt in Iowa, of course, and I'd heard that she, too, was interested in writing, puns, and literature, but I had no idea what sort …

SMALL News

(The title is a self-referential joke, because earlier I had a post called Small News. I just want everyone to get my jokes.) Well, I haven't posted on what we're up to in the Arb for a while. My apologies! Currently we're doing vegetation sampling, which is counting the cover and occurrence of prairie plants, …

Ecology and Watership Down: Giving the People What They Want

People talk a lot about the allegory of Watership Down, but that's too mainstream for me. I'm nothing if not a niche writer (get it?), so here are some of the ecological highlights from Watership Down. It's what everyone wants. Or at least what I want. Time to tear down the "wall" between biology and …

Laura Did a Bad Bad Thing

So, I really missed singing... And I'm a narcissist, if the mere existence of this blog hadn't tipped you off. I recorded myself singing covers of "Blackbird" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Which is just what the internet needs. More floppy untalented things seeking attention. I'm sorry. This is the worst. Why am I …

Prairie Plants or How To Distinguish Between The One With The Purple Flowers and That Other One With Purple Flowers

In addition to watching 80s Dance movies, this summer I have  job working in the Hernandez Lab! Huzzah! So far we've been doing  a lot of really cool projects with the GRASS experiment which is looking at the effects of the presence or absence of two big C4 grasses. We also came up with a …