Category: Blog

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The Open Notebook

 Loree Griffin Burns

My friend Jeannine Atkins introduced me to a new blog last week, and I am enjoying it so thoroughly I have to spread the word. The Open Notebook is dedicated to the art and craft of science journalism, and every post I’ve seen has inspired me to read further, dig deeper, and wonder more about the work I do. If you write about science, or want to, you should check it out.

The timing of TON’S recent post on taking good notes has been particularly fruitful for me. I’m attempting to find (reinvent?) my working groove after a too-long moving haitus. Reviewing scads of research materials related to my current work-in-progress has surely helped me slide back into my story, but reading at the same time how other science writers take, treat, and organize their research notes has absolutely deepened the experience.

 

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Back to Work

© Loree Griffin Burns

After a long and busy month of traveling and packing and moving and unpacking and celebrating and, truth be told, worrying about the work I was neglecting all the while, this morning I get back to work. I got up early, excited to begin, but was stopped short by this breathtaking sunrise. For me, it was a reminder to strive for balance. Work, yes, but enjoy beauty and family and all the rest, too. Every day. Somehow, some way, make room for all of it.

So I spent some time outside with my camera, had breakfast with the boys, walked the little miss to school. Had a cup of tea. And now, with a deep breath of gratitude for the many facets of this gorgeous morning, I’m ready to begin.

Have a wonderful Monday, friends.

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Got Bugs?

Okay, Scientists in the Field (SITF) fans … do you remember this Donna M. Jackson title from 2002? Of course you do. How could you forget that cover? I remember reading it back when I was obsessively studying the SITF series and preparing to pitch my own title to its editors. That pitch became my first book, Tracking Trash, and now, in just a couple hours, I’ll be in a conference call with Tom Turpin, the guy up there with the bugs on his face.

Can I just take a moment to say that this sort of full circle stuff thrills me to no end?

Anyway, Tom and I are joining forces with a group of scientists and educators to tout the power of insects in science education. We’ll be sharing our ideas later this month at the Entomological Society of America annual conference in Reno, Nevada, in a morning-long symposium. If you happen to be in ‘the biggest little city in the world’ at the same time, do please stop by and say hello. I don’t think there are any plans for us to wear bugs, but you never know …

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The Other Way to Listen

THE OTHER WAY TO LISTEN
by Bird Baylor and Peter Parnall
Atheneum, 1978

Category: Picture Book

These days, my life is boxes and newspapers and packing up to move. I’m slow at this task, especially now that I am smack in the middle of boxing up my library. I’ve got a few (too many) books, and being both anal and geeky, have always wanted to catalog them. This seems the perfect opportunity. So, before I box them, I’ve been adding each and every title to my LibraryThing page.

The other thing that slows me some is reading. Each time I pull an old beloved off the shelf, I’m tempted to clear a spot on the couch and visit with it a while. That happened this morning with Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnall’s THE OTHER WAY TO LISTEN. And I’ll tell you this: reading this book is a fine way to start a day.  One might argue a reading of this picture book as the finest way to start every day.

On the surface, it’s a quiet picture book about a young girl and an old man and the one trying to learn from the other how to listen. Really listen.

“He was so

good

at listening—

once

he heard

wildflower seeds

burst open,

beginning

to grow

underground.”

My kids have heard this story before, but humored me and listened to it again this morning. It still confuses them, as I think it would have confused me once, too. (You know, back when I was more literal … and not so good at listening.) Like the old man and his protege in the story, I can’t really teach my kids what the book means. But I can box it up and move it over to the new house, keep it safe on my shelf, read it to them now and again. Encourage them to think on other ways to listen.  Remind them,

“you have to

learn it

from

the hills

and ants

and lizards

and weeds

and things

like that.

They do

the teaching

around here.”

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Wednesday Wild: Shagbarks

We’re moving. If you have ever moved, you can probably relate to how I’m feeling these days: harried, overwhelmed, excited, and sad. The sad part has to do with saying goodbye to a place that has been Home to my family for a decade. For ten years, we’ve worked the soil here, and trampled the grass and climbed the trees and lived with the wildlife. We know this place in a way that no one else does, and it is very hard to let that go. Those trees up there, for example, are two of a dozen or so shagbark hickories that we have come to know. The new owners will surely love them as much, but when they wonder why the one on the right has no shag at the bottom, who will tell them?  Who will describe the little boys who grew up playing under that tree? Little boys who one day ran their chubby hands over those tags and strips of glorious hanging bark and couldn’t help but pull. And pull. And pull.  I’m sad that this story will come away with us, and that the lovely, generous, naked-at-the-bottom-shaggy-at-the-top hickory will not.

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Wednesday Wild: Stinkhorn

© Loree Griffin Burns

I found this strange musrhoom growing at the edge of the front lawn. It’s a stinkhorn, and I now know where the name comes from; they really stink! The over-sweet smell is distinctive, and designed, I’ve since read, to attract flies, which land on the slime-coated tip of the mushroom, muck about, and fly off with spores stuck to their legs. Stinky, but clever.

Happy Wednesday …

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Book Love: The Beak of the Finch

© Loree Griffin Burns


Check. Out. That. Photo.

On the bottom: THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, the book that changed the way I think about sharing science and, quite possibly, the course of my scientific career. (I’m not kidding. I’d still be a lab rat had this book not crossed my desk back in 1995. Read it.)

On the top: my gorgeous, wholly original, and completely amazing new purse, made from an actual copy of THE BEAK OF THE FINCH* by the uber-talented Caitlin Phillips at Rebound Designs.

Have you ever seen anything so excellent in your life? I am the happiest book geek on the planet.

* Said copy was contributed by its kind and generous author, Jonathan Weiner, who took pity on a devoted fan who wanted a purse but couldn’t bear to give up her copy of his book. Thank you, Jonathan!

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Wednesday Wild: Antlers

© Loree Griffin Burns

Yesterday Ellen Harasimowicz and I tagged along as Dr. Maya Nehme went out into the wilds of Worcester county to check the Asian Longhorned Beetle traps we’d watched her set earlier this summer. (You can read about that adventure here.) While snapping photographs, Ellen managed to spot a small antler in the grass. Just as I was saying, “Keep your eyes open, because I read somewhere that deer usually shed both antlers at the same time …”, I stepped on a second antler! I’m not sure who was more excited: Ellen, me, or my daughter, who posed for the photo above as soon as we got home.

Have a great and wild Wednesday!

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Testing Your Kidlit Prowess

The Burns kids are reading some kidlit classics in school this week, and I’m reading along. (I’m sort of geeky that way.)  Wanna guess what we are reading? Sure you do …

Here’s a quote from the Newbery Medal winner my seventh graders are reading for Language Arts class:

“Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. IMMEDIATELY, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE.”

And this one’s taken from a book my fourth grader is devouring at the moment. It’s another classic, by a zany author whose works are well-known and much-loved, in the Burns house and around the world:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has an ugly thought every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier, until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.”

Well? Have you guessed? I’ll post the answers–book and author–in the comments later today …

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Simply Brilliant

I am feeling less bitter about plastic bottles today, and more proud of the human race. Why? The Liter of Light initiative. Check it out:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOl4vwhwkW8&w=420&h=315]

Simple. Practical. Brilliant. A whole cut in the roof would allow the sun to shine into the room below in a direct line, ceiling to floor. By snugly inserting a plastic (glass would work too, I guess) bottle of water into that hole, however, the sunlight is refracted in all directions, illuminating the room with the strength of a 50 watt bulb. Bleach keeps algae from growing in the water, and allows the liter of light bulb to function for five to ten years without replacement.

How can you not love this? In these days of gloom and doom and worry and fear, a bit of inspiration.

(Many thanks to author Susan Taylor Brown, who posted this video on her Facebook page and, so, brightened my day.)