Our Neighborhood Watch

It's been a busy week for our neighborhood watch.  Every morning, about ten o'clock or so, an intruder has invaded our Littleton, Co...

An Invasion of Clubtails

Clubtails seem to be everywhere on our Littleton farm this week.  These dragonflies, members of the family Gomphidae, are named for the bulg...

Health Insurance & Young Adults

Among the groups that oppose the Affordable Care Act are young adults who resent the health insurance mandate.  They argue that their partic...

Colorado's First Snow

While light snows may dust the higher peaks of Colorado during any month of the year, the latest cold front, which moved through the State o...

The Nature of Democracy

Democracy, which protects the power of the individual, relies on a spirit of cooperation and compromise in order to thrive.  While various p...

Eleven Mile Reservoir

Created by a dam on the South Platte River in 1932, Eleven Mile Reservoir lies in the southeast corner of Colorado's South Park.  Renown...

Memories of Canada

In September of 1973, I joined a group of friends for a canoe trip in Algonquin Provincial Park, in Ontario, Canada.  That was my first excu...

The Camargue

The Rhone River of Western Europe rises at the base of the Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps; flowing westward, it passes through Lake Geneva ...

An Explosion of Fungi

Following the recent heavy rains and cool weather along the Front Range, our Littleton farm is greener than it has been all year.  In concer...

The Mental Illness Taboo

Once again, a mass shooting has been perpetrated by a man with an apparent history of mental illness.  As in most previous cases, the killer...

Lessons from Boulder

The tragedy unfolding in Boulder and nearby cities reminds us that the scenic foothill canyons were not carved by the beautiful whitewater s...

Into the Plume

Driving back to Colorado today, we traveled just south of a cold front that was pushing south across the Great Plains.  As a result, intermi...

Voyager 1 & Politics

Though not officially acknowledged by NASA until yesterday, Voyager 1, launched in September of 1977, likely reached interstellar space late...

Front Range Deluge

Heavy rains along the Colorado Front Range over the past three days have produced flooding from Colorado Springs to Ft. Collins; the worst o...

Giant Sequoias & Wildfire

During this active wildfire season in California, concerns have been raised about the possibility of damage to giant sequoia groves.  These ...

The Complex Anadarko Basin

A classic structural geologic basin, such as the Michigan Basin, is essentially a bowl within the deep, Precambrian basement rock into which...

Late Summer Heat

After a relatively mild summer across the American Midwest, excessive heat has settled in over the past two weeks.  And, like an unwelcome h...

Katydid Season

Reading next to a picture window last evening, I was startled several times by a thud against the glass.  In each case, a large katydid, att...

E.D. & World Hunger

When I posted The E.D. Epidemic in January, 2009, I expressed my conviction that drug companies were flooding the airwaves to cash in on t...

Male & Female Healthcare

Ask any adult (or child for that matter) to enumerate differences between males and females and they would have little trouble coming up wit...

The Stable Continent

Though it appears static during our brief human life spans, Earth's surface is continually molded by natural forces and many of these on...

Communal Bird Roosts

Last evening, waves of starlings passed over our yard in Columbia, Missouri, moving toward a roost site somewhere northwest of our neighborh...

September Mornings

Though warm (or even hot) days may lie ahead, the longer nights of September bring cool mornings across the American Heartland, generally fr...

Brain Trauma Season

It's that time of year when I look forward to the start of college football season but must acknowledge that I am a reluctant fan.  Just...