Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 77 entries, all of them here in full.
December 10, 2024 · 229 words
Meridian
From 1995, a picture of Kathy at the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich. She’s standing on the prime meridian, but the scanner’s cut off her feet so you can’t see it. The photo may have been taken by Sue Casper or Gardner Dozois, who joined us on the excursion. We were zigzagging our way to the […]
Read entry →December 8, 2024 · 322 words
Lepidoptery of the Mind
When we were in New York State in October, we spent half a day cruising around Ithaca, viewing Kathy’s alma mater of Cornell. We didn’t see much, because pouring rain pretty much confined us to our car. But there was one exhibit I really wanted to see, which was for some reason stuck in a […]
Read entry →December 3, 2024 · 219 words
Latomia
This modest bit of Sicilian landscape has an infamous history. This is the Latomia dei Cappuccini, an ancient stone quarry on the north side of the city of Syracuse. In 413 BCE, the Athenian attempt to capture Syracuse collapsed, and the entire Athenian army, its allies, and 200 ships were forced to surrender. The capt
Read entry →November 29, 2024 · 98 words
The Green Hamster Plague
No doubt you all remember my Nebula-winning story, “The Green Leopard Plague,” which revolves around a contagious virus which allows people to take energy direct from the sun. Well, guess what? I’ve scored another hit on the WJW Predict-O-Meter! According to this video, “scientists” (as they are always called in these
Read entry →November 26, 2024 · 86 words
Row of Cheaters
From 1980, Olympia in Greece, home of the original Olympic Games. The row of plinths on the left memorialize those caught cheating. Their home cities were expected to purchase a bronze statue of Zeus to be placed on one of these plinths, which was then carved with the name of the cheater, the name of […]
Read entry →November 24, 2024 · 92 words
Packed
Among all the outstanding works I saw at the Corning Museum, this was one of the most impressive. Outwardly a modest genre painting, this turns out not to be a painting at all, but a mosaic— a micromosaic, to be specific. The picture is made up of thousands of tiny glass rods bundled together and […]
Read entry →November 23, 2024 · 191 words
Up the Pole
So here I am in Cambridge in 1987, punting along behind the Cambridge Backs. I hadn’t punted in 12 years, but my skills (such as they were) came back quickly enough, and I hardly collided with anything at all. It was nice the the river had a gravel bottom, unlike the muck at the bottom […]
Read entry →November 20, 2024 · 58 words
Elevator Games
Another Banksy rat, this one found in the elevator of the Fenimore Museum. I admit I don’t know what the hell is going on here, The rat seems to have a cassette recorder strapped to his chest, and his face is— exploding?— undergoing transformation? His paintbrush(?) also seems to have suffered. Your guess i
Read entry →November 19, 2024 · 84 words
Wave Action
This is a photograph of the 2012 solar eclipse in the South Pacific. We were on a ship a couple days’ voyage north of New Zealand, and it was following the track of totality across the water. Unfortunately the sea wasn’t completely still. I had set the camera for a long exposure, the ship rolled, […]
Read entry →November 17, 2024 · 109 words
On the Table
Some of you should recognize this. It’s at the Corning Museum of Glass. I’d ask something like “what is this?”, but it would open the doors to floods of Cyrillic spam, so it’ll have to remain a mental exercise. UPDATE: If any of you guessed that this was the Periodic Table of the Elements, you’d […]
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