Where I Go: Herding the Goats at Squashville Farm

Goats Live in an Alternate Reality of Soil and Self-Determination

It happens at least once a week: The goats commit jailbreak. They nibble, squirm, and leap their way out of the two-acre space where they are supposed to stay put. Inevitably, they’ll find their way onto the deck, the driveway, the front steps, the screened porch, the bee and butterfly garden out front, and occasionally across property lines into our neighbors’ yards.

I learn of their transgressions when a nose appears near a window or a hoof pushes open the front door, or when I hear their joyous earthy bellows—or when …

Where I Go: Peñasquitos Gardens | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Where I Go: Penasquitos Gardens

Traversing the Gulf Back to a San Diego Apartment

I haven’t brought my wife or son to see where I mostly grew up. I keep meaning to. But even though it’s less than a mile from my father’s condo …

Where I Go: Meeps Vintage | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Where I Go: Meeps Vintage

Finding Liberation in a D.C. Clothing Shop

Washington, D.C., is a beautiful, tidy town. For the better part of my years there, I was mostly very sad.

It was not a city I thought I’d first move to …

Why Groundhog Day Now Elevates Science Over Superstition

For a UCLA Biologist, Celebrating the Lowly Marmot Could Shed Light on Global Warming

I am a scientist who loves Groundhog Day, that least scientific of holidays. Every February, as Punxsutawney Phil shakes the dust off his coat, emerges from his burrow, glances …

When I Say “Dallas” … You Think “Cowboys!”

How Football Helped the “City of Hate” Recover From JFK's Assassination

Watching my Dallas Cowboys fall to the Green Bay Packers last Sunday on the last play of the game in an instant classic of an NFC Divisional Playoff, I couldn’t …

How ‘Close’ Is Your ‘Proximity’?

From The New Yorker to BuzzFeed, the Irksome Phrase Still Thrives After 150 Years of Redundancy

The warning echoes beneath the girdered ceiling of Boston’s South Station, and in the cramped bustle of New York’s Penn Station, on a TSA loop of repeating announcements: “Keep personal …