Bryan's Posts About Being Human
Earth Day Week Events (including my “Audacity of Migration” talk on Friday)
Meet me in Waitsfield Friday night, April 22 (Earth Day), for amazing tales from the frontiers of migration. And have a look at where we human fit in a new “tree of life.”
Going Wild This Thursday in Thetford
Meet me at Thetford Academy this Thursday, April 14, at 7PM to explore the frontiers of the American backyard — and beyond.
Messing with Texas
A bit of price-comparison shopping — a gallon of gas and a gallon of water — from just north of the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas on 2 January 2016. I report; you decide.
On War and Hairdressing
My Veteran’s Day contribution comes from a precious friend, Erica Heilman, who produces radio exploring the depths, summits and dusky corners of the human condition. Over the course of two days, Erica interviewed Vaughn Hood, who was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. Never have I heard anyone talk about the Vietnam War with such honesty and simple eloquence. Erica calls it “the story of an extraordinary American life.”
A Poem for Earth Day
April is the carnal month.
The forest returns with cold, wet desire.
Bob Spear (1920-2014)
CONSIDER EVERYTHING YOU KNOW about the past half-century of birdwatching in Vermont. Long before your field guides and checklists, before bird apps and atlases, before nature centers and eBird, before VINS and VCE, there was Bob Spear. On the long, green path of…
DSA Update No. 4: Gomphicide
PICK ANY SCENE FROM THE DRAMA OF LIFE ON EARTH: birth, growth, courtship, sex, subterfuge, betrayal, murder. Find them all expressed in the lives of dragonflies. Shakespeare could write the script on these predators.
War and Climate and Us
War and Climate and Us Required reading in The Times from Roy Scranton, a soldier, author and philosopher. In this gripping essay about war, climate and humanity is our future – a fate with scarce shelter in the Anthropocene. Scraton writes: Now, when…
Won’t Write for Food
By Bryan on October 28, 2013. Two worthy dispatches from the writing life: In Saturday’s New York Times, Tim Kreider, in Slaves of the Internet, Unite!, lampoons editors and publishers who ask writers to work for nothing. What Kreider missed was that this…
Hub Vogelmann (1928-2013)
Although the word conservation suits the laws of physics and the prevention of waste, its highest calling is in the preservation of nature. Conservation is now synonymous with the protection of life outdoors. Yet a protector is now gone. Legendary…
A Poem About Death
On Dying Let me die of apple crisp. – Bryan Pfeiffer
“It’s Not About The Nail”
If you were in woods or wetlands all summer, as I was, and are among the one-percenters who missed this:
