Cocktail Hour
Getting Outside Saturday (and Sunday): Bill and Dave go Camping
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 7 comments
Hewlitt River Marsh (behind Dave’s house)
Getting Outside Saturday: Where’s Bildo?
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 5 comments
Sandy and Climate Change
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 3 comments
Hurricane Sandy in the Context of Climate Change
Posted by Milkweed Editions here on 10/29/2012
A couple of years ago David Gessner traveled the Atlantic Coast and pondered the research of Orrin Pilkey, one of the country’s leading scientists studying coastal geology. What would happen if a super-charged Atlantic hurricane struck the densely populated East Coast? Worrisome trends in the environment, industry, and population distribution are at the heart of The Tarball Chronicles, the book Gessner would later write. His speculation was prescient: Embodied in Hurricane Sandy, some of his fears are coming true.
Please take a moment to read this excerpt from The Tarball Chronicles. It describes how climate change is poised to vex the people of the Eastern Seaboard for years to come—unless we act swiftly and plan strategically.
From “Atlantis”:
I am not in the business of predicting the future, but I will say this: it’s only a matter of time until what happened to New Orleans during Katrina happens to another city. Miami is an obvious candidate, but there is another, even more high-profile city that is ripe for flooding. At the end of our tour of the Outer Banks, Orrin Pilkey said something that stuck in my head:
“Let’s say the seas really rise seven feet. That’s not a prediction, mind you, but a working figure I’ve now arrived at. If I were in charge of things that is the figure I would use. It’s smart to be ready for the worst. The official prediction now is a meter but I think it’s too conservative. I would act as if the seas would rise seven feet by 2100
“If sea level rise really does get to six or seven feet we aren’t going to be worrying about a few beach houses,” he continued. “We are going to be worrying about Manhattan and Boston.” Continue reading →
The Complete Romney Set
categories: Cartoons / Cocktail Hour
comments: 1 comment
Did you miss a Mitt? For those who have been collecting their Romneys piecemeal, here is a chance to own the whole set!
And after I post this I will head to the polls for early voting. I face a tough decision: Do I vote for the guy I want to win or the guy I want to cartoon?
Here’s today’s offering:
And below please find the the Complete Romney Collection….
Bad Advice Wednesday: Stop Doing That!
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
comments: 2 comments
I visited a physical therapist after my neck surgery, and he was a great help as I recovered from that trauma. While I was there, what the heck, I asked about a chronic, painful issue I was having with my elbow. Not from tennis, not from skiing, not from softball, not even from typing–I hadn’t been doing those things since my neck injury. No, my elbow problem–nothing to do with my spine–was the result of hitting it on the door frame as I walked into the very, very familiar bathroom at my house. It’s an old place, and that doorway is narrow, and I just judged it wrong, repeatedly judged it wrong and smacked my elbow, so often, in fact, that I’d raised a bony lump on my right wing, painful, and sticking out the way it was, even more likely to get banged. I told Dennis the P.T. about this. He didn’t even have to think, just shot back his advice: “Stop doing that!” We laughed, but he was serious, and he was right. He even had instructions: “Think about how you go through that door and go through that door a different way! Slow down, tuck your arms in. Or, Bill, just pause and think before you go in there!” And that’s what I did, stopped hitting that door frame with my elbow, and now after years of chronic pain, my elbow is fine. So that’s my advice for today, with thanks to a great professional: “Stop doing that!” Whatever it is that’s making you hurt, whatever it is that’s keeping you from doing what you want to do, whether it’s writing, reading, thinking, making, or being, whatever you’re doing that isn’t for the good? Stop! Stop right now! Stop doing that! Continue reading →
Wild Ducks: How an Essay of the Empty Nest was Hatched
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
comments: 13 comments
Claire Gilbert at eleven, sledding with her puppy Jack (January 1998)
The past few years, working on a memoir of my experiences farming in Appalachia, I’ve generated tons of material—twice, 500 pages—and have spun some passages into stand-alone pieces. The published ones include an essay on my hired hand who died; another about a legendary pond-builder with a tragic secret; one about the historic first meeting of my future wife and my father; yet another about my father’s return to farming in retirement and his decline and death. Continue reading →
Buckeyes
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 6 comments
Here’s a guest post from one of our favorite writers, Joe Wilkins:
Buckeyes
On this bright-cool mid-May afternoon we are lazing on the front lawn, my three-year-old son and I. For a time we were rolling a ball back and forth, then we read through our stack of books, now we are inspecting leaves and pinecones and the brittle remnants of last fall’s winter-bitten buckeyes. Up the block the school bus settles to a stop. The yellow doors fold back, and the neighborhood children slip off and knot on the sidewalk. The bus whines to speed, and Walter rises, entranced, watching the bus glide by us and on down the hill, the husks of buckeyes forgotten at his feet. Despite the many and varied play options we’ve offered—dolls, trains, puzzles, garden tools, a kitchen set—Walter is all boy. He is unreasonably fascinated with busses, semi-trucks, and tractors. He likes to wrestle and stomp mudpuddles, chew sticks. At the park, he runs and runs the bases.
Serial Sunday: The Weight of Light: Episode 5
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 2 comments
[Episode 5 of on ongoing story, 500 words at a time. Eventually we’ll have a category where the whole thing can be read in order, but for now, scroll down to start with Episode One and read through to this point!]
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The Weight of Light
Episode 5
“Freckles”
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Mr. Rickets office turned out to be the entire 61st floor of the Branch building on 57th street, quiet and softly lit, elegant work stations, elegantly dressed people at work, mahogany everywhere, including every scrap of trim and all the many bookshelves in the conference room, which was outfitted with a large hidden screen upon which a Cisco systems interface showed a pair of plushly similar conference rooms waiting empty, one with stainless steel trim, Ted noticed, the other black stone. Continue reading →
Table for Two, Minus One: Michael Nye Interviews Himself
categories: Cocktail Hour / Table For Two: Interviews
comments: 10 comments
Q. What are you doing here?
This is it! Today is the official Bill and Dave’s celebration of the publication of my first book, STRATEGIES AGAINST EXTINCTION. It’s a collection of eight stories and one novella, written over a period of almost seven years. I’m delighted that this book is now out in the world, and just wanted to take a moment to share the joy and toot my own horn (honk!) and let you all know. I’m sure many of you have lots of questions about this earth-shattering event, so I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can. Continue reading →
