August set a record in Boise, Idaho for the greatest number of days hotter than 100° F ever, beating the record set in 2017. Happily, WC’s central air-conditioning system worked pretty well. WC dealt with the blast furnace temperatures by huddling around his AC vents. But, hotter or hottest, August is done, maybe way past…
There are so many mysteries about Lake Idaho. How did it last an incredible 7.8 million years? Where did it go? Why did it go? Geologists are slowly teasing out some of the answers, but as in the case of most good science, each answer just raises more questions. This is Part 2 of 2…
There are so many mysteries about Lake Idaho. How did it last an incredible 7.8 million years? Where did it go? Why did it go? Geologists are slowly teasing out some of the answers, but as in the case of most good science, each answer just raises more questions. This is Part 1 of 2…
On the long list of things you need to worry about is the problem of PFAS. “PFAS” is an acronym for perfluoroalkyl or polyfluoroalkyl substances. It’s a class of chemicals composed of long chains of carbon molecules very strongly bonded with fluorine atoms, and they are damned near indestructible. Other chemicals break down by bacterial…
Among Americans, at least, the most familiar thrush is the American Robin. It’s the largest, most abundant and broadly distributed thrush in North America. The very wide presence of this songster in its backyard setting, together with its loud, musical voice, make it one of the most recognizable birds in North America. The American Robin…
WC spent a few hours on a late summer trip to Camas Prairie/Centennial Marsh east of Boise earlier this week. The recent thunderstorms had brought a little bit of green to what is usually a pretty parched landscape this time of year, and the birding was good. Of course, there were the usual challenges sorting…
At the Bonnie Raitt concert WC attended recently, Raitt lamented the loss of John Prine, her friend, co-performer and colleague. “Hold John close to your heart,” she urged us, before performing “Angel from Montgomery,” the Prine song she has sung most often. It’s on Prine’s astonishing first album, along with other unforgettable songs like “Sam…
WC was told one time, and regrettably the source is forgotten, that “Lawyers arrive after the battle is over and bayonet the wounded. Then the accountants arrive and pick the pockets of the dead.” Welp, the bayoneting and pickpocketing is still going on over the Mueller Report and the reaction of the Trump Administration to…
In response to WC’s earlier post on Humpback Whales, a reader asked, “What’s the biggest whale you’ve photographed.?” The would be Balaenoptera musculus, the Blue Whale, the biggest animal known to have lived on our planet. In the North Atlantic and North Pacific, blue whales can grow up to about 90 feet and weigh over…
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the creation of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. It coulda shoulda woulda been a national park, and enjoy better protection that the limited benefits of being a national recreation area, but at the time half a loaf was all that was possible in Idaho’s perennially weird politics. If it…
WC was lucky enough to spend a delightful evening with Mavis Staples and Bonnie Raitt last week. While the August night started with the temperatures at Outlaw Field in the high 90s, by mid-concert conditions were tolerable. Mavis Staples was the subject to a long biographical sketch (sometimes paywalled) by David Remnick, published in the…
The Wood Thrush is yet another spot-breasted, brown-backed thrush. The spots are bigger and extend further down the belly than other North American thrushes, but what really separates the Wood Thrush from its cousins is its song. Henry David Thoreau said, The song has an ethereal quality that sets the thrush apart from all others……
Anyone with a shred of critical thinking skills knows Donald Trump’s reaction to getting caught in misconduct is to throw out a series of bullshit responses until he finds one that works with his supporters.1 Trump has now been caught twice with presidential documents, the second time with documents described in the infamous Mar-a-Lago search…
This post continues a new semi-regular series, Most Memorable Moments, featuring some of the most memorable natural history experiences that WC has been lucky enough to enjoy. Sometimes nature can be magical and memorable, and, yes, it’s still magical even when you know how and why it works. Links to prior Most Memorable Moments are…
The full quote, of course, is “An attorney who represents himself has a fool for a client.” It’s a cautionary aphorism that every law student learns. It’s also true for non-lawyers. And WC offers as an example of that truth Sutton, Alaska resident Mark N. Wayson. Mr. Wayson is a former Fairbanks city police officer…
WC isn’t talking about Willis Alan Ramsey’s odious song, although WC will really have to do a blog post about Ramsey some day, and his (in)famous second album. “Muskrat Love,” originally “Muskrat Candlelight,” was covered by a lot of folks but made a hit by The Captain and Tensile back in 1976. Ars non disputanden…
WC recognizes that long blog posts about mining law aren’t exactly light reading, and that, rightly or wrongly, most readers aren’t all that interested in the arcana. But Center for Biological Diversity v. Davis might be one of the most important mining law decisions in the last half century, and merits at least a brief…
Some humans ain’t human, some people ain’t kind You open up their hearts, and here’s what you’ll find A few frozen pizzas, some ice cubes with hair A broken popsicle, you don’t wanna go there — John Prine, “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” Fair and Square, 2005 WC admits to an occasional fascination with some appallingly…
WC doesn’t have very good photos of Veery, another of the Catharus thrushes. In fact, WC has only seen the species three times: twice on High Island, Texas, immediately after the birds had flown non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico, and once, at considerable distance, in the community of Sea-Tac, Washington. And WC has never…
Oh people, look around you The signs are everywhereYou’ve left it for somebody other than youTo be the one to careYou’re lost inside your housesThere’s no time to find you nowYour walls are burning and your towers are turningI’m going to leave you here and try to get down to the sea somehow Jackson Brown, “Rock…
In 2017, Wasilla resident Angela Lincoln was chosen as Alaska Department of Corrections Employee of the Year. In August 2021, she was sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary after pleading guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy to provide contraband to prisoners at Alaska’s Goose Creek Correctional Facility. She admitted to the charges…
WC has praised Randall Munroe‘s excellent XKCD web comic before. But just for giggles, let’s parse a random cartoon and see why WC has such a high opinion of Munroe’s work. (Spoiler Alert: It’s not his artwork.) Here’s his 2650th cartoon, which went up a couple of weeks ago. If you mouse over the original…
(This is a part of a sometime series on artists WC has known and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. WC has also written about Bill Berry, Jo Ann Wold and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Here’s another wonderful artist WC doesn’t…
A Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is a communications mistake that is believed to be linked to the unconscious mind. The theory – backed by some decent science – is that this kind of gaffe reveals secret thoughts and feelings that people hold. About 45 minutes into the July 21 testimony of former Trump White…
“Dirt,” in this case, is the fabulous Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who gave us a lovely two hour show at Boise’s Egyptian Theater last Thursday night. It’s pretty wonderful to go to a live concert again, even if WC and Mrs. WC were members of the maybe half a percent wearing face masks. The Nitty…
Another spot-breasted thrush, the Hermit Thrush has WC’s very favorite summer song of all the Alaska passerines. Andrew Spencer recorded this lovely song on Kodiak Island: Mrs. WC used to wake WC up in the middle of the night to listen to the first of the year Hermit Thrush song in our yard. It was…
Neil Gaiman is one of WC’s favorite writers, partly because you never, ever know what Gaiman’s next book or creative effort is going to be about. In a long interview (paywalled) of Gaiman in the New York Times on August 1, David Marchese asked him about fan expectations after Gaiman’s hugely popular, hugely influential Sandman…
South Georgia Island is a surviving fragment from the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent. Located in the far South Atlantic Ocean, at latitude 54° South, about 1,200 miles east of the tip of South America, it’s a long ways from anywhere, but it’s absolutely worth the effort and expense of getting there. The western side…
“Megaptera” is Latin for “big-winged” and “novaeangliae” means “New England.” The name is nearly nonsensical. Whales don’t have “wings,” although these do have the largest pectoral fins of all cetaceans, and while they may or may not have first been seen in New England, in fact the species’ fourteen diverse population segments (“DPS”) are scattered around…
While WC recently answered readers’ questions, in that effort WC held one question out to address is a separate blog post. You’ll see why. Why do you write about geology so often?When WC was in undergraduate school, in the late Pleistocene, he took a minor (sorry) in Geology. One of the classes was on plate…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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