One evening, as he is losing the king’s faith and his own power, Cardinal Wolsey counsels his protégé Thomas Cromwell on their present impasse. King Henry VIII will dissolve his first marriage and take Anne Boleyn as his new bride. Wolsey and Cromwell are to find the means to the king’s end. Confounded, Cromwell questions… Read more »
Fall, in Seattle, is a time of spiders. Giant house spider males, close relatives to the Tegenaria duellica David Sedaris writes about feeling such easy if fraught kinship with in his essay April & Paris: Caught in the Web of Nature, search for females in our basement, darting away at our step. Outside, the garden… Read more »
Red Lodge, Montana, my father’s hometown, was a booming, raucous place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following the discovery of coal in upper Rock Creek Valley in 1866, Finnish, Scottish, Welsh, and Italian immigrants – my great-grandfather and his family included – converged there, sustained by the mines that brought workers out… Read more »
Crows are numerous and newsworthy in Seattle. Widely published research from University of Washington wildlife biologist John Marzluff demonstrates the social birds remembering human faces and teaching other crows to recognize these people. Dr. Marzluff’s work builds on studies that show crows as capable of manipulating tools. Seattle artist Buster Simpson has found in the… Read more »
Last week, a new pope was selected from among his cardinal colleagues. He is the first Jesuit to assume the position, the first pope from Latin America, and the first to choose Francis as his papal name. Saint Francis, namesake to former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, is something of an anomaly in the… Read more »
Paris, in April, was teeming with people: spring break tourists queuing up to see the famous sights and the politically passionate, or perhaps just paid, papering its telephone poles with images of and messages from politicians who would meet their fates in the elections just after we left. The elegant Museé de la Chasse et… Read more »