Wondering like an Egyptian
Just over a week ago, I finally fulfilled my inner 9-year-old’s wish: to see artifacts from King Tutankhamen’s tomb. In this case, it was a relatively short journey, to Times Square rather than Egypt. One of these days, I’ll actually see the pyramids and the Sphinx. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs Hairston, introduced me to [...]
The kitchen laboratory
These days the kitchen is my chemistry lab, and if I were back in college I’d probably be one of the students beating down the door to get in to a cooking science class like this one at Harvard. Despite my experience with chemical gadgets, the wildest item in my kitchen is a food processor. Watching [...]
More Maker Faire
As my husband and I were roaming from tent to tent at Maker Faire on Sunday, we were recognized, but not for any reason that you might expect. “Hey, I know you,” a guy said as he turned around from examining a table. “You got hit in the head with that plane.” Yes, our claim [...]
Urban versus rural nature
Maybe it’s in the zeitgeist: this week’s New York magazine waxes poetic about ecology in The Concrete Jungle. Not what I was expecting when the city has been teeming with fashionistas and urban wildlife on the pop edge of culture. But, there it is in the first photo: Staten Island turkeys! In our heat island, enveloped [...]
Close encounters of the bird kind
Last Saturday started out as a low key weekend adventure: just a little local beach without having to fight too much weekend traffic. So we crossed the Verrazano bridge to Staten Island. In Great Kills Park, we spotted plenty of your expected birds– plovers and gulls of varying shapes and sizes. But then my husband, [...]
Molecule of the Week: Water
It’s been a rainy week in New York City, and my office next to our front porch and my container garden has me thinking about that ubiquitous wetness. It’s been soaking my plants, and after a quick errand on Friday afternoon, its dampness lurked for hours on the hem of my jeans. It’s easy to [...]
