Statio: a sacred pause

Michael Peterson OSB, a monk of St. John's Abbey in Minnesota, had a reflection in Give Us This Day in April that has stuck with me. He writes of the monastic practice of "statio", where the monks line up two by two to process in to the church proper for a liturgy. It is, he says, a chance for a sacred pause, a chance to stop and collect oneself to be sure, but also a chance to reflect on what God is calling you to do, here and now, to consider what you believe and why. A full intentional stop.

I'm at the very start of a sabbatical leave. An intentional stop, a full year pause in my teaching. This reflection is a reminder that my vocation (unlike the pneumonia vaccine I got this week) is not "one and done". It is the relentless call of God, shaping and reshaping my life.

So, yes, the sabbatical is for rest and renewal, a stop, but it's also a sacred time for growth. I'm getting ready to retire from teaching, one more year after I return from sabbatical. "What next?" I wonder. "What now?" I ask God.  

Pause. 

Stop. 

Breathe. 

Listen.

________________

Reflection is here.

Cat-astrophe

If you look closely, you'll notice that the Delft mug on my desk features not pastoral images of the Netherlands but robots and pterodactyls and aliens invading. Catastrophes. It seems like an apt choice for these pandemic days. Besides, it holds heat nicely and it works with the splints holding my finger joints in place. 

The other day I brought up a mug of hot tea to start the day. Fluffy decided to join me. Afraid she'd knock over the tea and hurt herself, I opted to remove her bodily from the desk. 

This worked. She didn't knock over the tea. I did. With such vigor I sent the tea flying a full six feet and left my phone in a puddle of (alas) sweet tea. I grabbed the phone and rinsed it. Washed the floor. Thrice. Because sugar. 

But I didn't break the mug and the phone still works.

So how's quarantine going for you?

 

Modern Burma Shave

It was, back in the day, prosaic poetry: Shave the modern way / No brush / No lather / No rub-in / Big tube 35 cents – Drug stores / Burma-Shave

I'm too young (really, by this measure I'm young!) to recall the Burma Shave signs along the highways, teasing out a line at a time. The signs came down in 1963, around the time I learned to read. When on a sabbatical leave in 1998 (in which we drove and camped our way across the country with a two year old and four year old in tow, in the days before video displays in cars or handheld tablets, but thankfully after recorded books) we encountered a similar set of signs for Wall Drugs on I-90 as we headed to the Badlands.  

But Burma Shave has been reimagined on the Pennsy Trail in Haverford, where pages from Sheep Take a Hike by Nancy Shaw tease you down the path and back. And if you tire midway through, there's bench and some books to take a break with.

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The camping in the Badlands was memorable. There were a whole series of thunderstorms the night we camped there. Crash woke me to tell me his sleeping bag was wet, and it was because there was a stream running through the tent. We hung stuff up to dry in the morning, drove to get breakfast at the diner near the entrance, but didn't get back until the next storm struck. We decamped in a deluging rain storm, the kids tucked up and dry in the minivan while a sopping wet Math Man and I loaded up our gear.

We stopped in the first small town we came to, and found a laundromat. Then we went to Wall Drugs. My memories of Wall Drug are misty, but I can still see the lemon yellow walls of that wonderful laundromat. Dry sleeping bags are a wonderful thing, right up there with dry socks.

Books: Alchemy and poetry

Crash has returned to his own apartment, leaving us with a call board to plan the meals and organize the day and an (almost) up to date inventory of the chest freezer.  Much as I appreciate the latter ledger, I'm wishing I'd kept a ledger of the meals we made over the course of these months.

I have been dipping in and out of Jane Hirshfield's new book of poetry, Ledger, which opens with "Let Them Not Say":

Let them not say: we did not see it. 
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

When I read "Advice to Myself" about a file with that title (and presumably advice) created a decade ago, I felt very seen.

I pulled philosopher Harry Frankfurt's little book On Bullshit off the shelf and am glad to have done so. He references Augustine! The essay attempts to carefully delineate lies and liars from bullshit and bullshit artists. 

"For the bullshitter, however all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

In this particular political moment, I highly commend On Bullshit to you. 

I've been captivated by Ainissa Ramirez's The Alchemy of Us. The opening vignette about traveling timekeepers was fascinating.

Anne Perry's Death in Focus is set in Europe during the rise of Hitler. It's a mystery, it's dark, and it's reminding me that we shouldn't close our eyes or ears. I have seen. I have heard. It's incumbent on my to speak. And to vote!

 

Sit in your cell

Friday was the feast of St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines. Romuald's rule was simple:

Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind. And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

I'm starting a sabbatical leave this week, six months of sitting in my cell — my study at home. I had many plans to physically travel over this period, but now am going to listen to Romuald's advice, and sit here, as though it were paradise, singing the Psalms in my heart, as I still can't in community. No guilt if my mind wanders off to the cardinal flirting with me from the pear tree, or the surprisingly cool caress of a morning breeze.

First up - a short book on prayer.

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What happens when your plans burn to the ground? Read Pico Iyer's' piece in Granta: Out of the Cell 

DotMagis: Dusting

I'm back.  I packed up plants and books at the end of last May and moved home, with plans to write and to travel during a six-month sabbatical leave.  I wrote and wrote:  three essays for Nature Chemistry, an essay for the UN for the International Year of Light, an op-ed on the internet and pseudoscience for C&E News, 17 blog posts for my Culture of Chemistry blog and a solid first draft of a book of writing exercises for chemists.  Then I traveled, to talk in Texas and Rome and Barcelona. Lots of exciting things happened (two NPR interviews! new colleagues to collaborate with!)  And that was just the professional end of things — about which I have to submit a written formal report next week.

My other authorial persona tried out a few new things as well — writing a short piece of fiction about an encounter with Pope Francis, in two languages no less— though that wasn't part of my official plan for my sabbatical.

But yesterday I went back into my office for a full day, and today am working on writing not only that report, but also polishing up the syllabi for the three courses I will teach this spring (intro chem, physical chemistry and a first year graduate course on quantum mechanics), and finishing a letter of recommendation for a wonderful former student.

This shift from extraordinary and the ordinary has prompted me to do some tidying of my study and office, and to write a reflection on the spiritual arguments for not dusting for DotMagis.

Dusting reminds me that our daily life, even when unremarkable, is perhaps not so ordinary. As I step back into my teaching, into the very ordinary days of my life, I’m reminded to think twice about brushing off the infinite hiding within the immanent.

Read the rest at DotMagis.  Read all of Marilyn Nelson's science flecked poem about dusting and chemist and spiritual writer Mags Blackie's thoughts about her return to the everyday from sabbatical.

Walking with saints

On Inis Caoil

Math Man and I have been away for the last month, on holiday first and then some work related travel for me interspersed with a bit more tourist time, hence the light posting for October.

This lengthy time on the road, so far from home, and the many miles of walking I did most days, had me thinking about the difference between going on pilgrimage and taking a holiday.

Pilgrimages have some spiritual destination attached to them, and holidays are meant to amuse, and divert (as long it's not your plane that's being diverted!).  But for me at least, the fabric of this trip, while certainly having as its warp vacation, had pilgrimage as its weft, weaving over and under the threads of rest and diversion.

We spent the first two weeks of the trip in Ireland where Math Man experimented with hard sphere trajectories (golf) and I walked.  One day I walked at low tide across tidal flats to an island with the ruins of a small chapel on it.

Ruins of St. Connell's chapel

There was a small church and monastic house, along with a cemetery with graves dating back to at least the mid 18th century. The church was dry stacked stone, with a few beautifully arched windows. Someone had numbered the stones in the apse, I suspect some reconstruction had taken place.   I said morning prayer sitting on the altar base, an altar stone lying a top it.  

I walked back along the shoreline, then climbed over a stile into the far pasture (no bull to be seen despite the signs, but I stuck to the path next to the cliff, in case I needed a quick escape route).  I walked to the far end of the island, maybe a mile or out, and stood at a little point and looked out over the Atlantic. The rocks were a deep, deep black, against the brilliant green grass and some bright green-yellow seaweed.  The ocean was calm, and deep blue out here; shading from turquoise through light bluegreen to deepest cobalt blue in the bay.  The contrasts between white foam on the waves and the black rocks and that grass was pretty incredible.  There were the remains of at least one other house in the middle of the island.  I had pretty serious hermitage envy. 

Wading back from Inis Caoil

The monastic ruins are said to be where St. Connell had a monastery in the late 6th century; St. Dallen and St. Connell are buried under the walls of the church.  St. Dallen was killed by pirates who stormed the abbey in 596 or 598.  Dallen was said to be a poet, and his severed head, tossed into the ocean by the marauders, was miraculously returned to his body and reattached, Connell then buried him under the walls of the church, where he himself would be buried a few years later.

I was very aware of the sacred history under my feet as I walked the ruins, and the rest of the island.  To pray atop the tombs of saints was an extraordinary experience, but to me the real miracle of the place was not Dallen's reattached head, but the courage of those who waded out here to celebrate Mass when it was forbidden, and those who worked to live out there in the 7th and 8th centuries.  I may fantasize about a hermitage, but it would not have been an easy life then.

If a pilgrimage is travel that moves your soul to new places, this day's walk was indeed a pilgrimage.

What prompts your writing?

Last week my friend Robin and I were talking about what gets us writing.  Julia Cameron's Morning Pages (three pages written each and every day, by hand) came up; I talked about my 10 mintute free write habit, which sometimes shakes things loose (and sometimes doesn't).

These days I've been thinking about writing prompts, those one or two line suggestions that push you to write about something you might not have thought of, or in a way that makes you acutely uncomfortable ("Using words of only one syllable...).  For one of my sabbatical projects I've been reading books and lists of writing prompts (yes, I have read, cover to cover, 1000 Awesome Writing Prompts and am well into 642 Things to Write About) and imagining writing prompts for scientists from the prosaic  — "Describe your research in 2 sentences." — to the wacky — "There is a button in the hood.  No one knows what it does.  Do you push it?  Why or why not?  If you do, what happens?"

Interesting things I've found along the way:

• A great reddit for writing prompts with some solidly helpful advice for writing good prompts (founded by Ryan Kinder, the author of 1000....)
• Theo Sanderson's XKCD inspired tool for writing using only the ten hundred most common words. #UpGoerFive

So what prompts my writing?  Sometimes those 10 minute writes, often an image.  A walk can shake things loose.  I keep a little book in my bag where I scribble down my own private prompts (which I admit that sometime later I can't alway read or remember what I thought was so inspiring — what was I thinking when I scribbled down "tea on Tuesday/Sherlock/watchmaker/became, not veiled" last February? I've no idea at all.)

What about deadlines?  I know some people who swear by deadlines as inspiration, but I find they provoke more terror than prose.  I have a whole slew of deadlines coming up, for some very interesting projects (including a bilingual one — woot!).  I asked Math Man last night to remind me that no matter how interesting the project, I'm booked up until late August!

What prompts your best writing?

Sabbath time

Valle Mirada in San Miguel, CA

I am sitting outside on the patio, on a nearly perfect summer afternoon. The sounds scape is nearly devoid of people.  No kids outside, no lawn mowers, leaf blowers or whining electric kid vehicles circling the driveway across the street.  Just the rush of the wind in the trees, the piping of birds, the burr of a bee whizzing past.  The view is not quite as expansive as the view from The Artistes' weekend retreat in the photo, but the trees rise like buttresses, enclosing my anchorage, the light shimmers through the leaves, ghosts of saints and angels hover in the walls.

It is the Sabbath, but also the start of sabbath time again, six months set aside after six semesters of teaching to plunge into writing and research.  Two books are in progress, one on writing for chemists, one on hermits for me — and others who long for a way to find meaningful pauses in a noisy and chaotic world.

I am inspired by a friend who came blazing out of Lent's shadows and finished the first, rough draft of a book over Easter's 50 days; excited by the expanse of time in front of me; rooted in the stillness and silence that the summer draws across the neighborhood.

Back from sabbatical: the roar of the waters

Deep is calling on deep,
in the roar of waters;
your torrents and all your waves
swept over me. Ps 42

I'm back from my sabbatical. I didn't wade slowly back in. Instead I wrung every last moment from the leave, then strode purposefully into the deluge of the first week of classes.  We're three weeks in and I'm riding the waves of energy that crash against my door.  New students, excited and nervous, eager and tentative, poke their heads into my office, "Are you free?"  "Can you explain...?"  "I was wondering if..."

Last year's juniors rap on the door, looking rested and assured, far cries from the tired shadows who cradled coffee cups on my sunroom floor last December and wondered about the pchem exam looming over their heads.  "How was your summer?"  "What are you doing this year?"  "What are you most excited about?" we ask each other and (more cautiously) I inquire, "And next year?"

To teach is to know in some ways that we are a pilgrim people — always moving, ever changing.  I sometimes feel as if I am standing on an island in the middle of a river.  People are shooting the rapids on one side, others pole stolidly along through the slow moving shallows and marshes.  I shout directions and advice over the roaring rapids, wrap up bundles of provisions and push them out those drifting past.  And at night, I climb the steps up the cliff, light the candles inside the beehive hermitage I've built on the clifftop.  I look out past the mouth of the river into the vastness of the sea and I chant the psalms.

Out of the depths, O Lord... 

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Photo is of my office.  For a beautiful reflection on wonder, which made me think yet more about why I find joy in teaching, read Robin Craig's sermon for today at Metanoia:  Welcome Wonder

Disney Princess - not

I missed (or was spared, depending on your point of view) the Disney Princess stage — neither Crash nor The Boy were much into pink or tulle. One of the things I've been doing on this leave is playing with new software. I've wanted to learn to animate for a while, but the tools (outside of Mathematica) had a long and steep learning curve. Enter my iPad and a great app for making quick and dirty animations. I watched 3 videos, less than two minutes each, and in less than an hour put together a very rough animation of a Möbius strip for my talk on Wednesday at local Jesuit University. Disney has nothing to worry about, but at least now that I know what I'm doing, I should be fast enough to do things on the fly for class — or the blog.

Phaith: If God rested, why do we want to multi-task?

Are you old enough to remember the test pattern?

From my latest column in Phaith magazine:

... I remembered how exciting it was to stay up late when I was a kid: the TV turned down to a hush so as not to wake my younger siblings, the old B movies that showed after the 11 o'clock news, and the cut-rate commercials for used cars, the bright sunshine glinting off the cars at odds with the midnight black lapping against the living room window. And when the national anthem played and the test pattern appeared, I would creep up the stairs, adventure at an end.

In this era of "on demand" it's hard for my kids to imagine that once upon a time TV programming didn't run 24/7, that at some point the local station called it a day, leaving a technicolor pattern of stripes and squares to hold the space for morning.

The third commandment pushes back at a world that demands we — or someone — be endlessly available to work: "Keep holy the Sabbath Day." ...

Read the rest here

On the Cause of the Odour Emitted by the Soil of a Garden after a Summer Shower

This should be the title of a poem. It's not, it's the title of a paper in one of the 19th century journals I'm perusing these days.

Just the title transported me to the time when the 18th century garden that I walk through at lunch to go to Mass was first planted, to some July afternoon -- or to last summer on retreat, when I got caught out a mile from the house in a rainstorm.

A proper break

Food and drink are off limits in the reading room where my carrel is situated. (Years ago this would have been a given, but you can bring a cup of coffee or tea to your carrel in the college library at Bryn Mawr, as long as it's in a travel mug — or you are not working in the Rare Book Room.) I'm finding it hard to adjust, a cup of tea has been at hand when I wrote as long as I can remember, from the handwritten reports laborious copied with a ball point pen onto loose leaf of my elementary school days to the typed versions put together at the dining room table after my brothers and sisters had gone to bed — cup after cup of tea poured into a stream of sentences.

When I admitted to my difficulties to an Irish colleague, he responded, "Now you have to take a proper break." Indeed. I'm finding it both difficult and delightful to stop for 20 minutes midmorning to make a cup of Assam and sit on the sofa in the alcove — which is perhaps why I so enjoyed this song in last night's choral concert!

The trouble with the helter-skelter life we lead
is coffee in a cardboard cup.
The trouble,
the psychologists have all agreed,
is coffee in a cardboard cup.

....

The trouble with the world is plain to see
is ev'rything is hurry up.
There's ready whip,
instant tea,
minute rice....

Listen to the whole thing here.

Tea. In a mug. Sitting down. Without multi-tasking. #lessonsfromsabbatical

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Photo is from Wikimedia used under Creative Commons license.

I feel like sushi

I've been reading about multiple ways of "reading" a text in a couple of places, particularly in Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul and in some of the stuff I'm browsing for my sabbatical project. Today I began to suspect that all this reading about multiple readings is warping my ability to read things.

On the back of the Wired sitting on the table in the little alcove where I eat lunch is an ad (for Siri) with the text "I feel like sushi." My first thought? I do feel a bit like sushi these days, all wrapped up in my red down coat and shawl. From there my mind swept on to thinking about how my (very raw) hands feel like sushi. Do I feel like eating sushi? Not particularly...thanks for asking.

And yes, those are what you think they are. Peep sushi.

A well-wintered life

(WARNING: substantial chemistry content. Theologians and others take a deep breath, I promise there will not be a quiz and that there's a point beyond the chemistry.)

The other day the Boy (who I'm coaching in thermochemistry for Science Olympiad) wondered why the freezing point of water on the Fahrenheit scale was 32^o, and the boiling point 212^o? (The Celsius scale is pinned to the freezing and boiling points of water - a sensible scheme.) I admit I had never given it much thought. Turns out that zero on the Fahrenheit scale is defined as the temperature of a "frigorific" mixture of water, ice and ammonium chloride in a 1:1:1 ratio. (There are many such mixtures, which produce baths of a particular temperature, useful in the days before refrigerators when you needed to produce artificial cold.)

I had never encountered the work before despite years of teaching thermodynamics (frankly, it sounds a bit too pseudo-sciency for my taste - and I do have opinions about what sounds good in a science term) and headed for the OED (the online version, not the one that Math Man brought as his dowry), to find that it is attributed to Robert Boyle in the 17th century.

As it turns out, I was more intrigued by a turn of phrase in one of the quotes given under the figurative meaning: "a well-wintered life..." I tracked down the 19th century reference in Google books to find that well-wintered meant reflective. Winter was a time to be indoors, a time of darkness, a time of year that encouraged — nigh on insisted upon — introspection and stillness: no central heating, no electric lights in those days. You stayed indoors if you could and wrapped up.

How well-wintered is my life? I'm on sabbatical leave, wrapped up in my writing and in my research, but also trying to spend some time in reflection about life. And I'm starting to warm to the idea of wintering over, of letting some things sit out this time. What will happen if I let the ground in which these seeds are planted heave up with the frost, be blanketed with snow, and softened by the melt? God knows.

[Aside: The author rather appallingly posits the opposite as well, those living in the tropics, where light and warmth abound no matter what the season are doomed to shallow living.]

Photo is from a well-wintered walk at Wernersville.

Watching still

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. Is 30:15

"Though Advent’s expectant hush has passed, St. Augustine reminds us not to give over that sense of quiet and stillness just yet: “See what God became for your sake; learn the lesson of such great lowliness, learn it even from a teacher not yet able to speak. …for your sake your Creator lay speechless, unable even to call his mother by her name.” As I look toward Ordinary Time and the start of the next semester, I am tempted to move on to Christ preaching and teaching and healing, to my life packed with the practical and engrossing. Isaiah and Augustine remind me not to rush on, to remain engaged with the lessons of the infant. To experience again being unformed, speechless, of necessity trusting that what I need will be given. To grow slowly, to watch the child to see the signs of what He will become." — from my Christmas reflection of 2009

Today starts nine months of sabbatical leave, of time for writing and reflection, a time for rest and growth. I'm tempted to dive into the projects that hang (some of them literally) enticingly on the walls of my office and mind, but am reminded by this passage to start slowly, to learn the lessons of the child in the crib. As yet wordless...

Column: From the depths of the sabbatical

In some ways my return from sabbatical leave last week was more jarring than my return to "real life" after the silence and seclusion of the Exercises last February. Not only my shoes, but everything was more structured. My time was less my own, my wardrobe was higher maintenance with more choice that I had to make...yet some how I did not want to let go of the interior sense of detachment that has been one fruit of the Exercises in my life. Can I truly be indifferent to whether it's time to write in my jeans or sit through an excruciating meeting with blisters on my feet? Pray for what you desire, advises Ignatius!

On another subject - T.S. Eliot's advice quoted below would be good for my physical chemistry students, too. You just need to dive in and try. You may not necessarily see the way clear, but you need to make the best of hints and guesses.

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard and Times on 3 September 2009.]

Take care to keep my sabbaths, for that is to be the token between you and me throughout the generations, to show that it is I, the Lord, who make you holy. Therefore, you must keep the sabbath as something sacred. — Exodus 31:13b-14

Reality set in with the blisters on my feet. After spending most of the nine months of my sabbatical tucked up in my study writing a book, comfortably attired in blue jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers, I shook out my professional wardrobe last week and went to Washington, D.C., for a conference. My feet were the first to express their dismay at being returned to a more structured environment. The rest of me was quick to chime in.

My sabbatical leave is coming to an end — meetings, classes and appointments are sprouting like weeds on my calendar. Like Sunday, the seventh day we are enjoined to keep holy, a day we are given for rest and renewal, my sabbatical was a precious gift of time. As I return to the classroom on Monday, I want to hold onto this gift of time — not as mere memory of time spent — but to let a sense of sabbath time seep into my daily life.

I’ve been thinking about what the deeper meaning of Sunday might be in my life — beyond a day that I am obliged to attend Mass, or an evening in which I am scurrying around looking for what everyone needs for school the next morning. The closing prayer for Night Prayer on Sundays reminds me what we are about: “We have celebrated today the mystery of the rising of Christ to new life.”

So sabbath time is Easter time. A day that structures the rest of our days, marking the change to a new week and the change to a new life. A time to rejoice, to be astonished again at the good news of our salvation, to rekindle our desire to know God deeply and intimately. A day given by God to remind us of our relationship to Him. In his apostolic letter, Dies Domini, Pope John Paul II observes, “even in our own difficult times, the identity of this day must be protected and above all must be lived in all its depth.”

Even as each Sunday draws to a close, the final words of Night Prayer are a potent reminder to me that the Easter stance is not meant for Sunday alone, “May we … rise again refreshed and joyful, to praise you throughout another day.” Sunday is not meant to be put in the closet like a fancy outfit awaiting the next party.

In practice, what will this mean? At the end of his poem, “The Dry Salvages,” T.S. Eliot muses “These are only hints and guesses, hints followed by guesses; and the rest is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.” I am taking my hints and guesses from my sabbatical, where my days were defined not by classes and meetings, but by prayer, walks and family meals.

Papers to grade and meetings to endure may have regained a hold on my time, but perhaps I need not let them define my day. Instead I can hang the daily burdens and trials on the same scaffold that upheld the graced time away.

I go back to teaching more convinced that I don’t want to live for the weekend, but live in the weekend — in the joyful depths of sabbath time. I pray I’ll be attentive and disciplined enough to be astonished at the everyday possibilities of the resurrection.

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Eternal God, you draw near to us in Christ and make yourself our guest. Amid the cares of our daily lives, make us attentive to your voice and alert to your presence, that we may treasure your word above all else. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. — Opening Prayer for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.

Secrets of Book Writing

My big sabbatical project is writing a book - about how scientists think. I've been working on this steadily since the fall. I was about half-done (ca 40,000 words done anyway) when I wrote the introductory chapter. I tell my students that writing can clarify your thinking. This did - although what is clarified was that the way I had structured the book overall could have been better. So now I am engaged in serious verbal carnage, ripping apart 6 chapters and reassembling them according to the new plan.

The day I began, an ad appeared on my Gmail for "how to write a book in two weeks" -- sometimes those ads cut a little too close to home! As if? If only!

On deck for the coming week: finish an essay tentatively titled "topophilia" for Nature Chemistry, column for the Catholic Standard & Times and two chapters for The Book.

Science in Santa Fe

Some RevGals may be going on a cruise tomorrow, while I stay at home - but I will get a relaxing trip to Santa Fe in May. I've been accepted into the Santa Fe Science Writers Workshop! A marvelous way to start my summer and a time of sabbatical...