Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
An ambitious effort to install poetry in national parks around the United States features the work of beloved poets in beautiful spots. It’s a reminder that “Nature is not a place to visit. Nature is who we are.” Also, Google...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...
If you make a beeline for something, you’re taking the shortest route possible. You’re also mimicking bee-havior! After a bee has visited enough flowers to gather nectar, she flies straight back to the hive. And: Even a word like...
When you’re distracted by trying to get the perfect photo at a wedding or fiddling with your camera during a solar eclipse, you’re missing out on some of the experience itself. There’s a term for this: It’s called...
Language from inside a monastery. A Benedictine monk shares terms from his world: For example, corporate prayer refers to praying as a group, not urging shares to return dividends. And did you know there’s a term of art for those annoying add...