Alex in Bishop, California, works with an environmental nonprofit that partners with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. When his team goes out into the field for several days on assignment, they refer to that stretch of time as a...
In an essay in LitHub, Kate Angus urges writers to be kind to themselves when they have a creative block. Sometimes you can get past it simply by letting yourself not write at all, with the hope that lying fallow for a while may be just what you...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
An ornithologist says there’s a growing movement to change the name of a pink-footed bird currently called the flesh-footed shearwater. The movement reflects a growing understanding that using flesh-colored for “pink” fails to...
George, an ornithologist, calls from Seattle, Washington, to discuss using of the term flesh-colored to describe something pinkish in color. The Century Dictionary, first published in 1889, defined flesh-color as “The normal color of the skin...
She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are seashells I’m sure, so if she sells seashells on the seashore, then I’m sure she sells seashore shells. Some claim that this tongue twister is about the early life of 19th...
