Hawaii is full of story material for those who want to write about ecology, marine biology, or agriculture. I'm sure there are plenty of stories here for me, too (because I don't write about ecology, marine biology, or agriculture--at least not yet). In the meantime, here's a video clip of a plant that I filmed while on a tourist excursion today with the kids. Our guide said this plant is called "sleeping grass." I've seen this plant in action once before, when I traveled to Costa Rica in 2006. That was a very quick trip for a destination wedding. I had no tour guide to explain the surroundings, it was just an accidental observation that the plant folded when I touched it. Nearby, a team of ants was carrying leave cuttings across the path, just like what I'd seen on nature programs such as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom...
Sleeping grass makes me think of nature movies again, only I'm thinking of ones like Planet Earth, which show amazing time-lapse video of forests where new plants spring up in a matter of hours, or where the leaves change from green to gold to red in a matter of days. Those fast-forward movies do a pretty good job of making plants look a lot like animals, don't they? They're not sentient beings; they're responsive, they sense, they move. And in this case, with sleeping grass, we can clearly see it. I wonder why more plants haven't evolved to employ such quick reflexes?
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I haven't posted anything here for a while because I've been engulfed in a trans-continental, trans-Pacific move this summer. That's right, I no longer live in Maryland, but currently reside in Hawaii, on the windward side of Oahu.
And traveling this far with two children, a household of furniture, and two careers-worth of legal and tax documents leaves little time for trivial matters like updating a website. Fortunately most of the slogging is behind us. And fortunately I managed to do a little work (other than the house-sorting variety) even in the midst of this transition. You'll see two new thumbnails in the favorites section of "My Projects" that lead to feature articles published this summer, including my first feature for the children's magazine Muse, which my son has been reading faithfully for more than a year. By the way, if you have elementary-age children and haven't read Muse, you should definitely check it out--not only because of my feature story in the September 2014 issue ("Stop Paying Attention! Improve your thinking with daydreams") but because every issue seems to have a great mix of stories about science, the world, and various "gee-whiz" items that are written to pique the fascination of bright kids. |
AuthorI write about curious phenomena around us. I also write about people who are passionate about their careers, hobbies, or life experiences related to science. This blog chronicles my journey. Archives
May 2021
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