New Work in A Velvet Giant

 

via Unsplash

“Bat Facts” is one of the cleverest, kookiest, me-est things I’ve ever written, and it’s out now in A Velvet Giant. 

You can read the full piece and/or listen as I read it to you here. 

Performance of a Lifetime

Dr. Moran tapped his heavy silver pen against a sheaf of test results. “Well,” he said, “I’ve found the problem.”

I’d arrived enervated in his office a few weeks ago, drifting through the door in a fog of weakness and fatigue. Headaches hammered me all day. I was 23 years old and my bones ached. I couldn’t feel my feet. My guts felt oily and torqued. Once a month or so I slipped into a hot, dizzy spell that made the floor slant and my eyes blur. None of this was new.

Want to read the rest? Click here or, better yet, go to your local bookstore and buy the summer issue of Bitch magazine.

Buy a few copies, actually. It's good.

Go, Baby, Go

In late 2014 I attended a meeting at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I was there to take notes, and was dutifully transcribing the speaker's comments on various programs the Institute had funded. My mind had just begun to wander when I heard her say, "...and robotic cars for babies."

That got my attention. I wrote down everything she said and looked it up as soon as I got home. The robotic cars in question were products of the pediatric physical therapy lab at the University of Delaware. In the time since receiving their grant, I learned, researchers in the lab had gone beyond robotic baby cars. They'd started a movement. 

Just under two years later, I'm very happy to share my story on the GoBabyGo! program, which was published this week on the Popular Mechanics website:

Why Power Wheels Are the Perfect Physical Therapy Tool for Kids

New Essay in Luna Luna

I wrote about chronic illness, love, and The Fountain in Luna Luna magazine this week.

You can read the essay here: To the Man Who Would Save Me from My Own Life

Art with an Agenda

Refined

Linda Gass creates gorgeous stitched paintings of the Western United States. They're deceptively lovely; each one is also a map of environmental damage.

I talked to Linda about her work. “I try to lure people in with that beauty to get them to confront the hard issues we face,” she said.

Well, it worked for this viewer. I'm totally hooked.

Read more over at mental_floss.

Plush Guts Make Life with Chronic Illness Just a Little Less Terrible

I wrote a story for mental_floss this week on a subject very close to my heart (and the rest of my body): coping with chronic illness.

Check it out if you get a chance: Cuddly Guts Bring Comfort to the Chronically Ill



photograph: I Heart Guts

Save (Me From) the Whales

"Cetaphobia" by June Park

Some people are afraid of heights, or airplane travel, or public speaking, or spiders. I am not afraid of any of these things--in fact, I like them all--but, as some of you may remember, I am afraid of whales.

Read the essay at The Atlantic.

Wow.

This is the November issue of mental_floss magazine. Inside is a fun adaptation of my jellybean story. That I wrote.

On the newsstand.

And that's amazing.

America's Weirdest State Symbols

The bald eagle. The Lincoln Memorial. The Stars and Stripes. Symbols matter in the United States.

But regional pride is important, too, and every state in the union has its own heritage to celebrate—sometimes in odd ways.

As children, we all learned about our state flags and state birds—but who can name their official state soil? How about their state crustacean?

Read more at National Geographic.

How Do You Poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Darwin’s research transformed the Galapagos Islands into an object of scientific and cultural fascination, as well as a bucket-list destination. In 1978, UNESCO honored the archipelago and its living treasures by naming it the first-ever World Heritage site. 97% of the islands’ area was designated a national park; the remaining 3% was set aside for human habitation. The parklands and their inhabitants are truly wild, offering no shelter, no Internet access, and no bathrooms.

So...How do you poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Click here to read the article on mental_floss.


(excruciatingly cute sea lion pup photo by dagspeak)

More News!

Hooray! Another in National Geographic Daily News! Hooray!

"Birds do it. Bees do it. But genetically modified fruit flies just aren't in the mood."

Read the whole article here.

Huge News!

photo: Alex Blājan via Unsplash

My very first article for National Geographic News was published this week! Please enjoy.

Well, It's Not Poetry, But It Is a Thing, Written Down

Remember the blue whale on the ceiling? I went back. A miniature version of the article I wrote about that visit was published this weekend in the Washington Post. You can read it on page 9 of the magazine, or online here. With luck, I can publish the full-length article soon, too.