Holding out hope for the roses
Why does everything have to be so fragile? These bushes thrived for years with only the occasional dump of pureed banana peels at the roots. Why die now?
Boston Globe Op-Ed, 2023
Excerpt:
Since COVID-19 hit everything feels so tenuous. We had to hide inside for months to prevent touching the wrong thing, breathing the wrong air, and it felt like the world itself was made of thin glass. For many of us our gardens were the only real thing we had, the continuity of seasons and growth and sharing something beautiful with neighbors when we could no longer sit for coffee. And now there is a significant pile of terrifically stabby sticks in the yard because rose bushes can just die on a whim?
The missing puzzle piece
Each puzzle piece performs a specific and unique function and no more. But that one function is everything.
Boston Globe Op-Ed, 2023
Excerpt:
The jigsaw puzzles are shelved with games in the far back corner of the thrift store, which was once home to a JCPenney or Filene’s and now houses second-hand ghosts. Like any good thrift store, it’s teeming with people at any hour of operation: Carts bump and kids dart and someone laughs loudly in housewares, a private joke with a public punchline.
That time 6 million Reddit users came together and created something, together
The online experiment created a gleeful culture of alliances, joyful sabotage, and appreciation of work done well.
Boston Globe Op-Ed, 2022
Excerpt:
Early Saturday morning, as the battle for the contested pixel border between the US flag and the transgender flag was reaching a truce and the Among Us character pestilence was still in its infancy, it became apparent that apocalypse movies have it wrong.
A healthy development: Boston Childrens’ Hospital’s new Hale Family Building
Globe magazine, 2019
Excerpt:
But the $636 million building also serves a catalyst for a new approach to patient care. That starts with the simplest detail: a pedestrian bridge that will make it easier for parents and patients to get into the hospital from the parking garage.
Guide to ticks
Boston Globe Ideas section, 2019
Excerpt:
Species like the Lone star tick — which carries a protein that causes allergic reactions to meat — are expanding their ranges.
How a Newton court judge allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant escape
Boston Globe, 2019
Excerpt:
Suspended Newton District Court Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph is accused of obstruction of justice and perjury for an undocumented immigrant evaded a federal agent in April last year.
According to an indictment filed April 25 this year, this is what happened.
In defense of screen time
Globe Opinion, 2017
Excerpt:
Most importantly, they are digitally savvy in a way that prepares them not just for this generation of tech, but the next. And the next. They will be ready for jobs that we can’t even dream of. They can navigate a digital social world with their generational peers in a way I could not teach them.
Your brain on Tetris: A history
Globe opinion, 2016
Excerpt:
Pajitnov wasn’t much interested in the business of gaming, which was unfortunate because the international tussle over the rights and revenues around the game were as complicated as the game is simple. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the saga of Tetris played out like a spy thriller — tragic deaths, corporate conspiracies, the prestige of nations hanging in the balance.
Easy out: Softball’s absurd gender rules
Boston Globe, Opinion, 2015
Globe.com | Portfolio
This fun opinion piece uses quotes from Boston softball leagues’ rule books, along with progressively funny illustrations, to highlight the oddities of gender rules in the sport.
Mapping a more virtual world
Globe Ideas section, 2015
Excerpt:
But there’s more to the world than piles of dirt and great swathes of sea water. Vargic charts still aim big. His “Map of the Internet” went viral in early 2014, as did his map of world stereotypes (in which New Zealand is labeled “Middle Earth”). His cartography creates an indirect commentary on how cultural proximities are every bit as relevant in the digital age as geographical ones.
There is no country of Google that can be found on a Google map. But the very large — and real — presence of Google online is accorded appropriate mass in a Vargic map.
From Hillary Clinton to WWE, the week’s winners and losers, in T-shirts
Globe opinion, 2015
Excerpt:
World Wrestling Entertainment created a shirt with tartan-style lettering as a promotional item for Irish female wrestler Rebecca Knox. Apparently, they meant to use “Lass” as an adjective, announcing a kicker who is female. But since the shirt also came in men’s and children’s styles, some took the word as an object, and the shirts as an endorsement of domestic violence. WWE pulled the men’s and children’s versions, but it’s still available in women’s sizes, subject to review by the grammar police.
How to best prepare kids for the digital world
Boston Globe, graphic op-ed, 2014
Globe.com | Portfolio
Excerpt:
A first step is to move the conversation away from how much screen time to what kind of screen time. What if we divided screen time into three categories: creative, interactive, and passive, then further divided our best content by skill-building, educational, and entertainment?
Rats in the data
Boston Globe, graphic op-ed, 2014
Excerpt:
Is the city being overrun by rats? To find out, we crunched the numbers — then mis-used a variety of graphic techniques. We rotated things, speculated using random events, and correlated the rise with seemingly unrelated data sets. Keeping our eye throughout, of course, on the real question: Where are all these critters coming from? (Spoiler alert: The real answer is on the bottom of the page).
New Years’ Resolutions for Charlie Baker
Globe opinion, 2014
Excerpt:
In an October debate, Baker choked up when recalling a 2009 encounter with a fisherman whose sons’ lives were “ruined” when they became fishermen themselves. The story had some fuzzy details, such as the existence of its main character, but Baker seems to have a passion for the industry and should follow through with some real fishermen face time.
At haunted hotels, hunt for ghosts but leave your cameras at home
Globe opinion, 2011
Excerpt:
That’s why Travelocity’s list of the ten most-haunted hotels in the United States is so satisfying. If spooky places can’t produce proof, at least they can be acknowledged as producing entertainment. At least their alleged ghostly denizens, though long dead, can still participate in a very flesh-and-blood pastime: competition.
On World Press Freedom Day, three nations call for release of Dorothy Parvaz
Globe opinion, 2011
Excerpt:
Journalist Dorothy Parvaz, a 2009 Neiman Fellow at Harvard, flew into Damascus airport Friday on assignment to cover the unrest in Syria and has not been heard from since.
Boston Harbor: Dredge with care
Boston Globe, Ideas section, 2014
Excerpt:
Two years ago, a visitor to the harbor islands stumbled on a palm-sized metal disk that could change history: A King Henry trade weight (note the lower-case “h” with a crown in the lower right corner) that would have been in use in England between 1496 and 1558. If its provenance could be verified, it would be the earliest known evidence of European trading on the North American Atlantic coast.
In defense of screen time
Globe opinion, 2014
Excerpt:
Few families have the luxury of “protecting” their children from all screens, so why shame them or pretend otherwise? It’s time to seriously consider how to prepare our kids for a digital future instead of vilifying it.
Gardere should apologize for gay insult
Boston Globe, opinion, 2010
Excerpt:
They exhibited everything you don’t want your kid to see in an adult: judgmental, passive-aggressive, cruel. So the mom was mad, wrote a stirring blog post, and now through the wonders of viral online indignation, millions of others are mad, too. But not everyone.
Feminism and the Duke PowerPoint
Boston Globe opinion, 2010
Excerpt:
The good guys and bad guys, the aggressors and the victims, are no longer so easily defined. The issue is no longer Men vs. Women, but has evolved online into redefining morality outside the confining boundaries of sex or even sexuality; it’s evolved into Good Decisions vs. Bad Decisions, into Don’t-Post-That vs. Seriously-Don’t-Post-That.
Presidential election predictor: And the winner is…
Boston Globe opinion, 2008
Excerpt:
The origami fortune teller, election shenanigans edition: Romney surges to victory after a piece of toast thought to resemble Ronald Reagan comes off the grill in a New Hampshire diner.
