Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Mappist

I recently read Light Action in the Caribbean, a short story collection by Barry Lopez, because (a) I really like the title and (b) I was curious what Lopez’s fiction writing was like since he is largely known for non-fiction. Honestly, I think I’ll stick to the non-fiction. The stories in this collection leaned towards…

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Air travel

I recently flew round trip from Los Angeles to Boston, the width of an entire continent. On the outbound flight I had a middle seat and absolutely no one near me opened a window for the entire flight. Air travel is a modern miracle. For thousands of years, humans locked to the sky and surely…

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Borders and boundaries

We all learn about shifting, borders in elementary school. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire (neither very holy nor Roman as it turns out), Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, they have all come and gone in different ways. I intellectually know that national borders are not permanent, but things have been relativity stable in my lifetime…

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Sky and Telescope

Way back in July of 2020 I shared some writing with my friends at the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, and one of the members encouraged me to submit an essay to Sky and Telescope. While camping in Anza Borrego State Park that Thanksgiving I finally came up with a good idea. I had it written…

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Localize Me

Anyone who has read a few entries on this site will know that I am keen on maps and navigation. My brain is good at spatial thinking and I’m generally good at remembering where things happened in a geographic sense. I also have fifteen years’ worth of photos saved on my computers that I never…

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