The Wrack

We are putting teachers on the estuary again this summer by offering a free workshop that will give educators data-driven climate change activities to bring back to their classes. The workshop will train up to ten educators in reserve-style environmental monitoring, "coastal blue carbon" concepts, and ways to understand and address climate change.

Weatherization has always been held up as one of the easiest and first solutions to climate change; why not pick that low-hanging fruit?

It’s morning in Antarctica. It’s high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and warmer ocean water and breezes have lifted the temperature on the Larsen C ice shelf to a balmy 32 degrees. Like a rifle shot, the ice occasionally gives off a pop that finds no place to echo across the flat, white, featureless plain.

It’s too early to tally the full damage from Hurricane Matthew, but I watched closely as four research reserves in our national system took the brunt of the storm.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/21/2016, and Making It At Home's 8/24/2016 issue.

August 21^st is my 38^th birthday. The odometer keeping track of my trips around the Sun just rolled over 22.2 billion miles. There’s still plenty of tread on the tires. I am beginning to notice a few twinges of maturity, though. Joint pains, hair loss, reflexive stubbornness, the irrepressible need to give advice – the signs of creeping codgerdom.

Beach-based businesses, a powerful economic engine for Maine, are generally little prepared for storm surge and coastal flooding. Yet lessons learned from previous disasters underscore how important the recovery of businesses is to the overall recovery of a region’s economy.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 3/20/2016, and Making It At Home's 3/23/2016 issue.

My wife and I and our two boys moved up to Maine full-time in July 2012. We felt like we’d arrived in the Garden of Eden. Lobsters were four bucks, the ocean was 73 degrees, and the outdoor season stretched well into November. It wasn’t the Maine I knew from my childhood (swimmable water!?), but who cared? It was awesome.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition of 1/24/16 and Making It At Home Thursday edition, 1/28/2016.

Always eager to start some new long-term monitoring project, I’m now keeping track of the number of conversations I have about the weather. I’m planning to henceforth keep tabs on with whom, when, and for how long we chatted. I’m already certain one thing will be constant: the changing weather will be discussed in only the most general, equivocal, unchanging terms. You and I will talk about the weather, my friends, but we will say nothing new.

Santa visited the Wells Reserve at Laudholm this summer. One of these statements is false.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 12/20/2015.

[Trigger warning: the following paragraph may contain troubling information for preteens]

Like many parents, my wife and I get a real kick out of the Santa thing. There’s something delicious about a full month of lying, straight-faced, to our eight-year-old and five-year-old. Usually we’re trying to dispel myths, convey science, explain the world, and correct pronunciation. Come Christmas season, we just start making @#$# up. The holidays are a wonderful vacation from reality, aren’t they?

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 10/18/2015.

Welcome to Southern Maine and “peak foliage.” Those blazing reds and oranges along the Turnpike and our back roads are a sight to behold. Of course, I’m talking about brake lights.