Mothers have an endless supply of stories

Marching for science in Plumas County

The Goldman Environmental Prize

Freelance journalists toil in isolation and obscurity.  The isolation comes with the territory: After the excitement of the research – travel to exotic destinations, interviews with specialists, online exploration – it’s you, a blank screen and one word at a time.

I found an immediate home with the Society of Environmental Journalists when I first joined in 1997.  Since then this international organization has provided colleagues, assignments, training in the craft, and true friends.

Years ago a Sacramento Bee editor went looking for a correspondent and found me, an erstwhile east-coast academic living at the end of a paved road in rural Plumas County.

I’m in a show!  Listen to Your Mother is a national series of live readings celebrating Mother’s Day and dedicated to mothers: having, being, enduring…

I work alone.  I have almost always worked alone.  That’s the nature of freelance writing – or so I assumed.

East of the Tehachapi Mountains, east of the jumbled junction of five ecoregions that forms one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, Joshua Tree offers yet another unique convergence.

Chernobyl is most remarkable for what it does not reveal: radiation.  You cannot see, hear, smell or feel the region’s best-known product.