Reports of "forest therapy" or "forest bathing" are rolling in, reminding people how therapeutic time in nature really can be, and I can't help but imagine how our ancestors would view these reports. I'm sure they'd be appalled at how many hours I spend indoors every day. I'm appalled myself sometimes!
Ahh, bubble tea. Just the words make me want the refreshing drink at any time of year, really, but especially during the hot summer months. At Oasis Tea Zone, you can get some of the best Boba that Seattle has to offer, with so many flavors that you could try something new every day for months--maybe even a year!
This list of new and upcoming games has me pretty excited, and I can't wait to try out a bunch of the games listed here with friends and family. We're also hoping to add some for our teen collection, as my almost 14-year-old has friends over for a monthly (sometimes weekly, especially in summer) games night.
It's raining where I live near St. Louis right now. It almost feels as if we've had more stormy days than not this summer, and it feels like there is no end in sight. Our nearby park has been flooded all summer, our celebrations are canceled and the sky is dark as I write. This is not normal.
I think we're at the point in our society where if anything is televised or made into a viral fad, people are going to try to do it, whether it's twerking in traffic on top of your car (which happened in my city!) to visiting Chernobyl because you saw a special about it and thought it looked interesting. Is it safe to visit? I have no idea, and can anyone really know for sure?
As much of us love to ogle food to the point of sharing it on Instagram (really? whatever floats your boat), this project seems a little... weird... to me. A photographer took pics of kids surrounded by the food that they eat and while it can be enlightening, I think it's also problematic.
It's exciting to hear that scientists have made a test tube baby white rhino in hopes of saving the species, but the ethical implications of this tech breakthrough have me feeling so ambivalent. On the one hand, I am completely freaked out over people cloning their companion animals--animals that aren't going extinct, and that are overpopulated.
With Independence Day upon us, it's a good time to remember some famous American poems and teach them to the young people in our lives. I think one of the most important ones has to be "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, but poems by black poets, Hispanic poets, LGBTQ poets and other marginalized voices are especially important to recongize and listen to. Walt Whitman is always a good idea, as well as some other poems listed in the link.
As courts across the country are stacked with extremist Trump judges, it's beginning to feel a bit hopeless in America, isn't it? I know progressives who think we just need an entire revolution after these past three mad years (which, let's face it, is really a lowball; things have been steadily backpedaling into the 1950s since Reagan), with an entire new system of government, and they don't have a lot of hope for next year's election.
Independence Day isn't one of my favorite holidays, but I do love to spend time with my family, have a rare beer on tap at the park (although ours is flooded this year and we probably won't go elsewhere) and watch the fireworks from afar. My husband loves the whole shebang--grilling meat, shooting off his own fireworks, etc.--and while that's not my cup of tea, a good Fourth of July cocktail certainly is!
Have you heard that cloning cats is all the rage right now? Apparently since celebrities are cloning their dead cats, everyone who has $25,000 to blow is doing it, too. And when the cat is "born," it's so much like the original cat that this couple actually named it the same name.
I've never been one to really get into "summer reads," particularly when they're about the beach, traveling or any other summer activities. That just doesn't represent me; I grew up not knowing what a vacation meant, except that I babysat my constantly fighting siblings instead of attending school. So it was a pleasant surprise when I read my Page Turners pick of the month for June and really enjoyed it.
Fortune Cookie Soap is my new obsession, and the company has so many deals that there's really no excuse to not try them out. They even have a Christmas in July sale coming up next week where they will have all kinds of goodies on sale, and I can't wait to see what it will be like. I've been getting their box of the month since May (a present I received for Mother's Day) and it's just been so fun to anticipate, open up and try.
I compiled a list of problems with nuclear energy and posted it on this blog. There are many reasons that nuclear fission is not the answer to our energy needs or to climate change mitigation. One reason I keep coming back to is that nuclear fission is just too expensive and it will ultimately price itself out of the market.
