A shameful fact which tells its own story.

We can help. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/o...

A few words about purple martins—how to help them, how to help all migratory birds, how to help birds that don’t migrate—in this week’s essay. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

I put this on every single elected official that continues to offer thoughts and prayers while human beings bleed to death from gunshot wounds in churches, schools, concerts, night clubs, community parades, and the list goes on.

You can add up all the enjoyable pursuits of LLMs and the work productivity hacks and none of them, separately or together, will be more important than AI’s ecological costs or political disruption. “We” is more important here.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

A few words about rain. And extravagant vines. And the undeserved protection of trees. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...

Once again, I am ded. 🪶

Sometimes you get lucky, even in a time when it’s hard to believe in luck anymore. I got lucky last week and saw Tyler Childers playing in the shadow of a giant T-Rex on the side of a highway. I was so happy on the way home I didn’t even think about my bitin’ list. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Finally. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/o...

“It’s a plague. It’s everywhere.” @kristenarnett.bsky.social speaks the truth. lithub.com/if-you-use-a...

The avian drama is off the charts this year. (Gift link via The New York Times Opinion Section.) www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/o...

North Carolina senators are pushing a bill they say will save Duke Energy customers billions of dollars by letting the utility build new gas and nuclear plants. A new analysis shows the opposite is true.

Just in case you aren’t disheartened enough by this horror show.

A small bit of news on this hot summer morning: My first picture book, THE WEEDY GARDEN, will be out next February. I hope it will be a reminder that how we manage the bits of soil under our care can be a crucial way to help our wild neighbors thrive.

Just a reminder that one lesson of JAWS is that you should listen to scientists when they warn you about a danger www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

"A powerful resistance finds a way to reach at least some of the disinterested and convince them that their very souls are on the line." @margaretrenkl.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/o...

When DOGE included the Freedom Rides Museum in its list of “underutilized” federal buildings targeted for potential sale, I just about lost my mind. The Freedom Riders' moral conviction in the face of hideous injustice is exactly the model we need right now. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/o...

Every elected Republican should be asked if they think the president has the power to send in military in to “liberate” a state or city from its elected government.

If people take the trouble to tell you you don’t matter, you do. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother.

A few words about fences and climbing vines, and about my late neighbor, and about Robert Frost and HIS neighbor. Mostly this piece is a meditation on time and the way it works on the human heart. And the way wildness finds every nook and cranny we leave for it. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/o...

In case you are wondering exactly which mechanism, of the many options available to it, the federal government will use to wipe us out. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/h...

“As the ICE arrests in Nashville continued over the following week, it became increasingly clear that neither justice nor public safety is what these roundups were primarily designed to deliver,” @margaretrenkl.bsky.social writes.

Not my usual essay, but sometimes the world gives a writer no choice of subjects. When terror comes for your neighbors, you stand witness. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/o...

"What baffles and infuriates me is how the leadership figures of these major institutions refuse to recognize the harm they are doing, including to the places they are supposed to be stewarding — and to their own reputations." open.substack.com/pub/margaret...

The “but we love immigrants who came here legally” refrain is demonstrably untrue. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

These cuts were never about saving money.

I’ve always said I could not love Bruce Springsteen more. Since the ‘70s I’ve said it. But these days I keep finding reasons to love Bruce Springsteen even more.

Tell me there’s a prettier planet. I won’t believe you.

Don’t Look… how does it go again? Don’t look at the escalating cost of disasters caused by burning fossil fuels that could easily be replaced by clean energy and that oil companies want to keep making you pay for instead of them? Yeah, something like that.

Nashville didn’t commit this moral crime, but it happened on our watch. It’s up to us to do everything we can in recompense.

applying for jobs again

It is a great honor to have a new essay at the literary publication Chapter 16 today. This site, which is not locked behind any paywall, is one of many programs we stand to lose if cuts to the NEH cannot be reversed. So many precious things are so precarious right now. chapter16.org/praise-song-...

We aren’t entirely powerless in the face of this destruction, but until we find the political will to fight for what we love, and to hold our elected officials to account, the very least we can do is to protect the nearby wildlife we have the power to protect. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/o...

In case you could use a puddle of baby bluebirds today.

If you thought this could never happen, you were wrong. And by “you” I mean me. I was wrong in thinking this could never happen.

So weird to see colleges promoting their USNWR grad school rankings today like grad students aren’t being disappeared by their government.

Now they have come for the NEH, and with it my beloved Humanities Tennessee and Chapter 16, where I spent 10 years of my professional life. The fact that it was inevitable in this Orwellian year of 2025 doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/o...

A book that was very close to my heart and nearly always at hand during the year I taught 12-year-old girls has just been reissued, in all its new-scans glory, after years out of print. Thank you, Sally Mann. Thank you, Aperture. Thank you, @nytopinion. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/o...

“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at F.D.A. is ... a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/h...

Look at how they keep finding new ways to kill us. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/h...

"We depend on one another for safety and survival," writes @margaretrenkl.bsky.social. "When we vaccinate our children, we are keeping them safe, but we are also keeping those who cannot be vaccinated safe. It’s part of the social contract."

The Atlantic and @jeffreygoldberg.bsky.social are committing journalism today. They have a vetted mega-scoop. They handled it responsibly. The WH and Admin lied about it. The Atlantic called their bluff. The material released just now is even more damning for the Trump team.

Spoiler alert: I did it for the babies. (If you were born in the 1960s, you might need to do it too.) www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/o...

Single digit results in my case, but still. Robbing me to replace me.

A few words about the moon, the flowers, and the people who help me remember not to give up all hope. (Gift link via @nytopinion.nytimes.com.) www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/o...

Take a moment today to read about a few of the young children whom Trump and Musk killed by shutting down USAID. The blame for these deaths falls on them. There will be hundreds of thousands more dead kids before their lethal crusade against foreign aid ends. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House. We had an agreed upon plan, House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it w/ a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.