narrative
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At my sister’s wedding in September, I had a conversation with her grandmother-in-law about squirrels. She’s from Texas. She was baffled at the boldness and number of squirrels in my parents’ backyard, chirping from the fences, playing with the bluejays and sparrows at the neighbors’ birdfeeders. Later in the season, they devoured the pumpkins my…
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A few years ago, I made the resolution that I would never wear anything I could not crash on someone’s floor in. Since then, my wardrobe has morphed into a collection of knits, worn denim, and layerable second hand pieces that I can and have taken naps in. However, I have two favorite pieces. Two…
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On the streets of Santiago, Chile in 2011, protests broke out on college campuses to demand a restructuring of higher education in Chile. These student protests faced severe police brutality, but an unexpected protector emerged from the back alleys: Negro Matapacos. A stray black dog who put himself on the front lines of protest, barking,…
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Have you ever heard of James Barry? If not, you’re among the majority, despite his towering impact on the medical establishment as we know it and there is a likely reason for it: James Barry was born Margaret Anne Bulkley in 1789. At 14, he changed his entire identity, began crossdressing, and started medical school. …
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Short answer: yes. Long answer: Instinct is just pattern recognition, taking slivers of information presented to you by a third party and running them through the immense meaty computer of your brain until it prints out something that says “I’ve seen this before”. Before we settled into tidy little farms, we used it to pick…
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Gerald Pickering worked three jobs and needed a car to get to two of them. That was just how America worked, and that was why he didn’t look too close at the Nissan Altima his friend offered him when his Honda’s transmission fell out. His friend cut him a deal, $500 up front and he…
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Four years ago, I trekked through dense pinyon-juniper forests on behalf of the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM). We were trying to assess plant community recovery and fire management following three thinning techniques: mulching, controlled burns, and selective removal. They had no control plots, but this isn’t about their shoddy experimental design, or…
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When it comes to pets, I am of two minds: chronic dog brain and exotic pet enthusiast. Both have innumerable benefits, but the way you interact with a gecko is different from the way you interact with a dog. An animal that only arose on the pet trade in the last 30 years does not…
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The first major loss I felt as a child happened in the town of Dinosaur, Colorado in a KOA overlooked by a billboard for McDonald’s that my parents tried desperately to hide from all 3 of their children. I had a small figurine of a coelophysis, a souvenir from a paleontology museum in Fruita. I…
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I never met my great grandmother Velma, she died some years before I was even born. Based on photos and my mom’s recollections of her to me, she was a short woman with a big personality and an uncanny knack for fiber arts. 20 years after her death, my mom drove our minivan three days…
from the pen of icarus blake 