Search results for “writing the book”

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Raw first stories from the Appalachian Trail

Raw first stories from the Appalachian Trail

When I first discovered that Earl Shaffer — the first man acknowledged to have hiked the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine — lived nearby, I went through…
February 28, 2019
Building a museum with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

Building a museum with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

 One day last October, Cara Solomon sat alone in an empty field in Alabama, the unmarked site of a lynching. She wasn’t carrying a reporter’s notebook or thinking yet about…
February 26, 2019
"I’m thinking longer term, in geologic time, doing just what I can each day and not putting it off because it won’t be brilliant."

“I’m thinking longer term, in geologic time, doing just what I can each day and not putting it off because it won’t be brilliant.”

When I encountered this sentence, I took it personally. I like being brilliant. I like it so much that I don’t write as much as I should. It’s uncomfortable to…
February 20, 2019
What the "Insect Apocalypse" reveals about faulty human memory

What the “Insect Apocalypse” reveals about faulty human memory

 For several years, I have been captivated by a porpoise. The cetacean in question is the vaquita, a Mexican marine mammal that is shy, adorable, and totally screwed. The reasons…
February 19, 2019
Forget the chocolates. Tell a story instead

Forget the chocolates. Tell a story instead

I‘m not much on Valentine’s Day. I liked the grade school tradition of exchanging Valentine’s Day cards with classmates. (Is that just a U.S. thing?) Each of us was supposed…
February 14, 2019
“I work like a watchmaker or an old-fashioned silversmith: one eye screwed up... ”

“I work like a watchmaker or an old-fashioned silversmith: one eye screwed up… ”

“I work like a watchmaker or an old-fashioned silversmith: one eye screwed up, the other fitted with a watchmaker’s magnifying glass, with a fine tweezers between my fingers, with bits…
February 13, 2019
For the love of analog in a digital world

For the love of analog in a digital world

Every August when I was young, my mother would take me to the store to buy some back-to-school notebooks. Maybe some pencils. Sometimes even a plastic pencil sharpener.This was a…
February 6, 2019
A prescient voice speaks for the Earth

A prescient voice speaks for the Earth

 Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” turns 70 this year. At a time when writing about ecological emergency is emotionally and politically fraught, the “Almanac” is a balm of wisdom…
February 5, 2019
A nutcracker suite: How top journalists interpret the dance of the nut graf

A nutcracker suite: How top journalists interpret the dance of the nut graf

Editor’s note: We’re looking at the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or…
February 1, 2019
A nut graf by any other name might taste sweeter ~ and be more digestible

A nut graf by any other name might taste sweeter ~ and be more digestible

A defense of the summary nut as it is used in variations by Ken Burns, the Beatles and Shakespeare
January 31, 2019