August 12, 2016
Spring is a season of courtship and nesting and fluffy little baby creatures. But all this effort takes energy: the mothers need calories to produce the young, and then to feed them. And eggs and offspring are helpless little packets of calories themselves, which may feed other young. So spring is a time of birth but also of death; while some bodies are being knitted together, other bodies are taken apart. The first murder, I witnessed. Hearing a cardinal outside my window, I looked out to see what the ruckus was. It was eating what could be a large bug, but was so green it could be a clump of vegetable matter. What looked like two oblong leaves were picked off and flung. Then the bird had something plump in its beak, which it thrashed, ejecting something wet. Beak full to overflowing, it flew off. In the time it took…
April 18, 2016
Even though for 27 years I had no idea what this plant was called, it has held a special place in my memory. Every fall I see it, a weed as tall as a...
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October 20, 2015
What has been your relationship with environmental issues? My mother took me to my first protest when I was six, against the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire in 1976. She also took me...
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June 15, 2015
Photos by Tom Hallock A year ago, when UUA/Beacon left our location on Beacon Hill to move to the Innovation District, I sorely regretted the change of scenery on my morning walk into the...
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September 26, 2014
Climate change is happening, and faster than scientists expected. Polar ice caps are melting faster, island nations are going underwater, the ocean is acidifying and warming. In the US, we are suffering catastrophic droughts...
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May 22, 2012
As an editor, I feel very fortunate to have worked with Stefan Bechtel on his book about the early and fierce conservationist William Temple Hornaday. As an eco-activist myself, I was captivated by Hornaday’s...
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April 3, 2012
When Alexis Rizzuto was planning the vacation she took this past fall, she didn’t pore over travel guides or look to glossy magazines for inspiration. Alexis is an editor at Beacon Press, so she just...
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November 15, 2011
On November 6, Beacon Press editor Alexis Rizzuto was part of the Tar Sands Action protest in Washington, DC. She sat down with our blog editor to discuss the protest and its impact. What...
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July 6, 2011
http://www.iheartungulates.com/ Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA is a hot spot for migratory birds and those who watch them, and the stars of the bird show this spring have been the owlets. In late...
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April 8, 2011
We at Beacon would like to commemorate the passing of one of our environmental authors, Theodore Michael Dracos (Ted in his by-line, Theo to friends). His book, Biocidal: Confronting the Poisonous Legacy of PCBs,...
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January 26, 2011
Historic Poster: Dig for Victory! When I started my vegetable garden in the spring of 2010, I swore I’d be the only “urban farmer” who could do so without having to blog about it....
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May 3, 2010
In spring every gardener’s fancy turns to thoughts of planting. But I cannot write about my own garden without first writing about my great-grandmother’s. Though I never met that remarkable Sicilian, and her garden...
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May 20, 2009
David, a birding friend, called to say he knew of a spot where woodcocks were performing their spring mating dance. The woodcock is a short, stocky bird with a long bill and a dramatic...
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