I am dressing up as a pantomime giraffe for Halloween

Yes, current events are enough to drive you crazy this year, so I always welcome a nice distraction, especially a DIY crafts project that takes a maddening amount of effort and time. With this principle in mind, I have decided to dress up as a giraffe this year — a decision that required a lot of legwork on my part. Not to mention neck work.  This costume took me about a week to put together. I made it out of duct tape and emptied out boxes of Refreshe club soda, daubed carefully with yellow, black and brown acrylic paint. The costume also makes use of an old bike helmet and some cardboard poster rolls. With the costume on, I stand nine and a half feet tall, so when I am out trick or treating with my kid today, I am going to have a heck of a time just moving down the…

Making national parks more expensive will only make them whiter: editorial in today’s Washington Post

Hi everyone. Happy Halloween and thank you for checking in. I have written an op-ed that is now live in the Washington Post regarding proposed entrance fee hikes at 17 selected parks and how this could shake out in terms of (whiter, wealthier) demographics. I have other pieces, in various places, that are coming out soon so I will make sure to keep you posted. This is a very serious issue; national parks belong to us all, not a select few.  

Update for October (eclipse, bots, brews & ice cream, etc.)

hi everyone — thanks again for checking this. I apologize if it takes a little while to post some of your comments and get back to you. Lately, ‘bots’ have discovered this website, and I am getting lots of truly annoying ‘comments’ that are actually links for dubious products or are from companies that want me to monetize the posts on my site. I don’t want to use this site to shill for silly products. Down with bots! If any of you readers have some advice about bot repellents, I am all ears. The upshot is that some of your kind words and comments are getting buried in a morass of bot messages. Sorry about that. I hope you are all holding up OK — I realize it has been quite a rough month. I am glad that I got a bit of camping in this summer. My family and…