We’re back at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony this month. Read some other posts about Writing Retreats HERE and HERE. We began the residency by going through the copyedited manuscript of Generation Space: A Love Story. That sounds rather tedious, but we found it exciting. Not only did we get caught up as writing nerds in the minutia of comparing Chicago and NASA style, but we felt motivated, knowing … Continue reading 5 Things We Did at a Writing Residency
What’s It Like In Space by Ariel Waldman Black Hole Blues and Other Songs From Outer Space by Janna Levin Crash Course: Essays from Where Writing and Life Collide by Robin Black Hood (an Object Lessons book) by Alison Kinney Being Mortal by Atul Gawande Continue reading 5 Books We’re Reading This Summer
Looking for something to ponder or celebration today, April 20? Here you go! 1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard prove that spontaneous generation doesn’t happen. If you’re still hoping that something can come from nothing, you’re more than 150 years behind the times. 1902: Pierre and Marie Curie radium chloride, the first compound of radium to be isolated in a pure state. In 2013, the FDA approved … Continue reading On This Date: 5 Anniversaries for April 20
Today, would have been college friend Madhavi Samala’s 52nd birthday. Madhavi died almost three years ago, having been diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer before most of us are supposed to have our first colonoscopy. Today, we re-post 5 Lofty Ambitions posts remembering friends and family and writing about cancer. Cancer, Risk, & Otherwise Who gets cancer? Who gets which cancer? What are the odds? … Continue reading Cancer: 5 Posts of Remembrance
Last Friday, Anna’s article “The Implant That Helps Fight Cancer” appeared at The Atlantic. The copyeditor did a fantastic job. Here are the five parts that were cut from the article manuscript before it was published. A small thing, really, an object the diameter of a quarter inserted inside her body to make chemo treatments and blood draws closer to run-of-the-mill. Something seemingly abnormal to … Continue reading 5 Things Left Out of The Atlantic
Last Friday, Anna’s article about medical ports appeared in The Atlantic: In 2012, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a type that’s most often caught late and has a poor prognosis even when caught early. My mother was diagnosed at Stage III, when her tumor had already grown into the wall of an artery, making surgical removal impossible. She decided to undergo chemotherapy anyway, … Continue reading What We’re Saying about Cancer
In the last couple of posts, we’ve begun our Countdown to the Cold War by talking about the reorganized at Los Alamos in the fall of 1944 to develop a method known as implosion. You can read the last post in the series by clicking HERE. The next step on the Manhattan Project’s Countdown to the Cold War occurred on September 22, 1944, and was … Continue reading Countdown to the Cold War: September 1944
August 6, 1945: An atomic weapon named “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 70,000 people—almost one-third of the city’s population—and more than 90% of the physicians and nurses were killed by the bombing that day. In the days, months, and years after that event and the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, others died as a result of radiation exposure and related … Continue reading The Next Year: Countdown to The Cold War, Cancer, and Space Exploration
We spent eleven days in Santa Fe on our self-designed writing retreat. Take a look at PART 1 and PART 2. Shortly after we arrived in Santa Fe, Anna leafed through a free tabloid and discovered that the visual artist Judy Chicago was giving a gallery talk at the opening of her new show at the David Richard Gallery. Anna had first come across Chicago’s … Continue reading Santa Fe Retreat: Judy Chicago
It was an unusually busy spring for the Lofty Duo. Doug was the conference coordinator for Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson, and Anna took on a new book project while still trying to work on her book about the history of the space program. Our transition into a summer schedule was abrupt, and it’s caused us some reflection. One of the things … Continue reading Lofty Ambitions Anniversary: 4 Years!
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