As we’ve noted, in California’s Orange County, to birdie means “to drink from a bottle without touching it with one’s lips.” Elsewhere this germ-avoidant act is also called airsipping, airing, baby birding. In parts of the UK, you might sky a drink...
An artist asks strangers to write haiku about the pandemic and gets back poetic, poignant glimpses of life under lockdown. Plus, the new book Queenspotting features the colorful language of beekeeping! Bees tell each other about a good source of...
The Orange County Museum of Art commissioned Los Angeles artist Alan Nakagawa to do a project he called “Social Distancing, Haiku, and You,” in which he invited the public to write haikus about the experience of living through the COVID...
An Orange County, California, listener describes how both his left-handed parents were forced as children to learn to write with their non-dominant hand. Their handwriting looked unusual, to say the least. Grant discusses myths about handedness and...
kangarooing n.— «But Colton never came home to the picture-perfect nursery his parents had set up for him. Instead, Donny and Amy Chilla and their parents spent hours cradling Colton, in a practice known as “kangarooing,” as...
toilet to tap n.— «Atwater plans to ramp up efforts to recycle wastewater for potable use, as Orange County has already done. (This process is sometimes disparagingly referred to as “toilet to tap.” In fact, it produces water...
