Sarah Burke Cahalan

Galapagos finches illustrated by Charley Harper - modernist, but stil biologically accurate

Charles Darwin, a tortoise, a finch in a tree, and the HMS Beagle, illustrated for a children's biology book

Darwin and his finches, illustrated by Charley Harper 📚

colorful cover of a Golden Book of Biology for children, illstrations featured include a human circulatory system and a wide variety of animals

Just putting together that the Charles Harper who illustrated this vintage biology book is... Charley Harper en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley... 📚 📜 🖼 🪶

probably some exercise followed by telling my kids how terrific they are, especially my little girl who loves toads and insects

[catching up on some reading] I did not realize we were literally in the midst of a rehabilitation of Larry Summers moment and I'm not sure where to place all this anger.

Broadening "Virginia Woolf's feminism, it should be emphasized, implied the broadening, not the rejection, of the domestic wisdom traditionally cultivated by women." -Herbert Marder, Feminism and Art: A Study of Virginia Woolf With something fragile balanced on my hip, I contemplate bed wetting and War and Peace. I consider the abundance of crumbs since the dog died, The Iliad, and receive in the mail The Paris Review. The washer expires off-centre so floods the basement and my son grasps and grabs at me wanting something beyond the few words he has, the gestures literature hints at, the metaphors of Yeats; wanting more than this January day; bigger than the philosophy of Plato or Melville's whale. Cuneiform to the lines of a Shakespearean sonnet his desperate need, my tired arms.

Yvonne Blomer, "Broadening"

I meant arc, ha! You know what they say about women in STEM

I didn't know there was an ongoing redemption ark. That makes it even worse 😠

Oh, thank you! I don't think I've ever seen this!

I'm probably more conservative (in personal, harmless-to-others ways, I hope) than a lot of folks on here, even open to the possibility of some demographic-level differences (strengths!), but to say this as president of a school that has had co-ed classes for only a few decades is peak incompetence.

Harvard fixed it by bringing John Lithgow to read the entire graduating class a children's story about a mouse who likes science.... and Larry Summers still gets a paycheck. (not knocking Lithgow, he's fine)

"different availability of aptitude at the high end" 🙄

www.thecrimson.com/article/2005...

I don't try to be an I-went-to-Harvard person, but I need to mention how pissed so many of us were at this guy back in 2005. He's wrong to think women are less intelligent, and he just keeps being wrong whenever I encounter him in the news. He never should have been in charge of a university. 😡

YouTube video by Allegheny Outfitters Merganser fishing underwater - Allegheny River - November 11, 2025

I don't think you'll regret watching this video:

youtu.be/Ultt6QhKU0w?...

A poster on white paper. In orange ink is an illustration of six matches, with a flame rising from the first four, reaching to the top of the page. In various fonts of wood type, black ink overprints the flames and reads: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ACTIVE HUMAN INTERFACE WITH THE MATERIAL WORLD In the bottom right corner is an attribution to URSULA K. LE GUIN

A stack of posters on white paper, with an individual poster sitting to the right of the stack. In orange ink is an illustration of six matches, with a flame rising from the first four, reaching to the top of the page. In various fonts of wood type, black ink overprints the flames and reads: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ACTIVE HUMAN INTERFACE WITH THE MATERIAL WORLD In the bottom right corner is an attribution to URSULA K. LE GUIN

Now that our edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Rant About 'Technology'" is (finally!) printed, bound, packed, & with campus mail, on its way to folks, we’re making approximately 60 of the internal poster available separately

If you’d like to claim one see the order form at forms.gle/BKJQWSmcnuq8...

burn pits, etc. not so grateful for that

🤩

I'm very grateful for the many terrific VA employees my family has interacted with over the years.

Teacher, Mother, Monkey? The Changing Last Page of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

This is some fascinating book history! childrenslitpilgrim.substack.com/p/teacher-mo... 📚 📜

the illustrations and the words seemed to vary across editions, so the author "did what any reasonable person would do: I requested every edition I could find through interlibrary loan to see for myself" 💕

variety of covers for the children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

"The actual story involves materials failure, market adaptation, and two artists who struggled in traditional classrooms creating something that would help children like them."

Teacher, Mother, Monkey? The Changing Last Page of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

This is some fascinating book history! childrenslitpilgrim.substack.com/p/teacher-mo... 📚 📜

the illustrations and the words seemed to vary across editions, so the author "did what any reasonable person would do: I requested every edition I could find through interlibrary loan to see for myself" 💕

The Chef Told Me by Jennifer Saunders

"He told me I needed wild mushrooms / dried myself in the oven overnight."

"The Chef Told Me" by @magpiedays.bsky.social

psalteryandlyre.org/2025/11/10/t...

those assholes

(lovely illustration, though!)

It'll be a jolly romp, I'm sure! He was a Catholic convert who was terribly shellshocked from WWI. (I think the conversion followed from the PTSD... seeking order.)

I only recently put together that the visual artist and the writer = the same person! Might be ideal for a Lenten book club..?

I was hoping you had read it :)
It's one of the many things I haven't gotten to yet but maybe I need to bump it up the list. My understanding is it's sorta like The Wasteland but about the Eucharist.

@ohioan49.bsky.social have you read The Anathemata?

A page full of illustrations of many different frog species.

Mary Cynthia Dickerson was the 1st curator of herpetology at @amnh.org. She authored "The Frog Book" (1906), describing North American toads & frogs. Explore it in #BHLib thanks to the @uoftlibraries.bsky.social Robarts Library: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31830673 #HerNaturalHistory #HERpers 🐸

He didn't make the tree into the Crucifix (cool but precedented). He made it into Jesus. Or maybe into the Paschal candle, but either way I've clearly got to read more things by David Jones... 📚 #poetry 🌲 🌳

tiny purple speckled flower with SNOW on it

toad lily e'er blooming 🌸 ❄️