Why I hate the Pulitzers
The most obvious reason is that I don’t have one. But, beyond that, as the names of the winners came down the wires this afternoon, the most deserving writer for beat journalism, or explanatory writing, or public service (take your pick) was not among them. He is Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times. I don’t know Taugher, but I could pick out a story by him without the byline. He is the reporter who is invariably at the edge of what can be known about water in northern California. His series on the two richest, most wildly entitled fixers in the state’s water politics opened the door to subsequent profiles of Lynda and Stewart Resnick by the New York Times and, only this weekend, the Associated Press. But Taugher was there first, with a shovel doing the hardest digging. The upshot? Among other things, without Taugher’s reporting in 2009, …
The ghost of Leo Politi
STRANGER things have happened, but not on this website. The night after attending Leo Politi Elementary School to take part in the March 2, 2010 Read Across America Day, a story posted itself on Chance of Rain while I slept.
As a reporter and science writer, never mind editor of this website, I can only assure readers that an investigation is under way. I take mystery postings very, very seriously.
In the meantime, those interested in Read Across America Day and other country-wide school programs should contact the National Education Association. Or for information about Pen in the Classroom programs, click here.…
“A hero named Pat”
One way to write your own history in an heroic guise is to follow suit of the Las Vegas Public Education Foundation’s curiously Soviet tradition of immortalizing city players in children’s books, then placing copies in every public school. Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Pat Mulroy was the latest in the “hero” series honoring local burghers. Many thanks to the Great Basin Water Network for the alert to this classic of its sort. “A Hero Named Pat” is a first class curiosity, but it is the works of Dr Seuss that are the subject of the upcoming Read Across America Day. For those of you who haven’t registered to take part in the National Education Association’s utterly wonderful event on March 2nd, there is still time to contact your local school and offer to read with a class. Think of the fun. Horton hears a Who! Green Eggs …
Identifying the whatchamacallits
Ah, nature. It’s so full of whatchamacallits.
For many, no labels are necessary when a flower catches the eye or a bird flits overhead. It could be cuckoo or it could be a sparrow. It’s background.
For others, the problem isn’t lack of interest, but memory. By the time most of us are back home flipping through a bird book, our minds will have played tricks with the plumage. He is sure it was an oriole; she is just as sure it was a woodpecker.
Click here to keep reading the LA Times article on new iPhone apps for bird and wildflower lovers.…
America needs ‘Los Archers’
Norman Painting (left) as Phil Archer in the BBC serial "The Archers." The photograph was taken in December 1954, four years after the show's launch as a propaganda tool to improve agricultural practice after World War II. Photo: Frank Morley and Getty via The Guardian
THE NEWS today of the death of Norman Painting, 85, the actor who for almost 60 years played Phil on the British radio series “The Archers,” is as good a time as any to suggest that America steal his act. …
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