Search Results for: wild thing

By Vincent J. Burke, executive editor A hawk went aloft, stealing everyone’s attention. It was a familiar scene for the speaker, a wildlife manager whose back was turned to the soaring bird. You could see the slight smile form on his face as he recognized the failed attempts of the rows of seated listeners to conceal their interest.…

Guest post by D. Rose Elder The media typically portray Amish characters as either disapproving, humorless, and colorless adults rigidly humming a solemn hymn to keep worldly thoughts at bay or conflicted, cocky, out-of-control rumspringa adolescents listening to ear-splitting rock and testing all the limits of decency. Of course, TV and the movies are by…

Guest post by D. Rose Elder The media typically portray Amish characters as either disapproving, humorless, and colorless adults rigidly humming a solemn hymn to keep worldly thoughts at bay or conflicted, cocky, out-of-control rumspringa adolescents listening to ear-splitting rock and testing all the limits of decency. Of course, TV and the movies are by…

by Howard Youth The nation’s capital wears its thick cloak of green this time of year. The towering trees, the flourishing vines, the humidity. Tourists feel they've stumbled into a tropical city. But, no, it’s just Washington, D.C. in summer. A very exciting time and place for the naturalist. So, drink a lot of water,…

Guest post by Mike Gesker Happy All-Star Break! Yes, fans, it’s time for the annual Mid-Summer Classic. In the enlightened days before the reign of commissioner Bud Selig, prognosticators would use the event as a fairly reliable oracle for predicting the eventual pennant winners in each league. Now, in Bud “Dr. Faustus” Selig’s Brave New…

Guest post by Mike Gesker Happy All-Star Break! Yes, fans, it’s time for the annual Mid-Summer Classic. In the enlightened days before the reign of commissioner Bud Selig, prognosticators would use the event as a fairly reliable oracle for predicting the eventual pennant winners in each league. Now, in Bud “Dr. Faustus” Selig’s Brave New…

Guest Post by Michael C. C. Adams Before Gettysburg and Vicksburg, we had Cincinnati and, more especially, Sharpsburg, Maryland. The repulse of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant in early July 1863 are often seen as marking the high tide of the Confederacy. Yet any real hope…

Guest Post by Angela Sorby Arbor Day is on April 25th this year, but its—um—roots trace back to 1872, when the journalist J. Sterling Morton organized schoolchildren to plant a million trees in the State of Nebraska. By the turn of the century, tree-planting had become a political issue; as Theodore Roosevelt put it to…

Guest post by Howard Youth April is a month when there’s no denying winter's retreat. Even if the thermometer dips below freezing, it rarely stays there for long. Days stretch longer, too. For local plants and animals and the wildlife enthusiasts who observe them, it's a very busy time. Washington, D.C. is a capital city…

Guest post by Charles J. Rzepka The late Elmore “Dutch” Leonard, who adopted the nickname of Senators pitcher Emil “Dutch” Leonard as a high school athlete and even had it tattooed on his arm, would seem an unlikely choice of subject for a book of academic criticism. Author of forty-five gritty, violent, fast-moving, and very popular novels…