Postcards from Kefalonia.

I'm in Greece for the next two months, but I'll be back at my blog in July. Να στε καλα!

Charge the Hill.

Many runners write, and many writers run. Enough, so that it’s got me thinking about the convergence—if there is any—between lacing up to hit the trails and buckling down to hit the keyboard. On the surface, running and writing could not be more antithetical. Running, they say, is physical. The impact of each step radiating...

Cut-throat: How to Keep Your Tulips From Tipping.

Tulip tipping is a serious problem. And no, that’s not a euphemism for something. Cut tulips droop, almost immediately, as soon as you put them in water. Even in the cleanest, freshest water, super-saturated with whatever healthful goodness it is that comes in those little flower-food packets from the florist, your buds will go bottom-up....

You Can Put That in Your Cave and Smoke It, Plato.

When I was a little girl, I read voraciously. Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Jane Austen. I will never forget the thrill I felt when Lucy discovers the fur coats she is brushing past in the wardrobe are actually fir trees, the chagrin I experienced for Anne when she nearly drowns as a...

A Checkered Past

Think you’ve got game?   What do you do when the living incarnation of sovereignty tries to stiff you for a well-earned paycheque? Obviously, you invent a mathematical model for reimbursement so confoundingly simple it will baffle the emperor, and so lucrative it will empty the emperor’s coffers. In short, you invent chess. The story...