Quirky people fascinate me.… Take certain kinds of collectors. Some collect snippets of rusty 19th-century barbed wire. Others swipe barf bags (unused), printed with company

While perambulating the vicinity of our Air B&B in Harrison, Maine, two members of the COSMOS team stumbled upon the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum.  And discovered an entry portal into the inner earth ...

At 4:30 AM on 18 November 1775, an earthquake rocked eastern Massachusetts, tilting church steeples, and sending the grasshopper weathervane atop Boston’s Faneuil Hall hopping to the plaza below. Today, geologists link this …

I’d like to tell you about the huge “killer” clams I’ve photographed on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. And I will. But first, I’d like to pay homage to our local softshell clam (Mya arenaria), famously harvested in my hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is located just a few flaps of a gull’s wing from Cape Ann. …

As we enter the brief beach season of New England, many of us hope to maximize the pending days of relaxation and salty air. What has become a secondary experience is the company of increasingly aggressive seagulls, who also have their summertime plans: plundering human food. …

You’re a salamander. A spotted salamander in a forest on Cape Ann. Spring has arrived and you’ve been sheltered underground in an abandoned mole tunnel for the last eleven months. …

The essay was first published in the Stanford News, September 6, 2022. We are reprinting a version edited for length and Stanford University centric content, but without altering the themes of philosophy, science, and art. The article also reveals the little-known manipulation of stellar images …