I often try to imagine the open ocean world of the jellies, a place where the physical barriers are completely different than on land. Like floating in space, life in the ocean is a three-dimensional and any direction can be navigated with ease. Being free from the constraints of a surface means you aren’t required […]
Jellies in the Jungle Continue reading
No jellyfish took home any accolades from the Academy of Motion Pictures last week (though a movie feature of Spineless would no doubt rock the box offices.) Nonetheless, recently a couple species of jellies have been officially bestowed some sweet superlatives. Last month, Craig McLean, a scientist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina ended
And the Award Goes To… Continue reading
Jellyfish have a subtle way of pushing your mind to the philosophical. Maybe it’s because they are hard to understand and lack of understanding easily morphs into abstraction. One night this month, Keith was out at an evening meeting, so I threw food on the dinner table, mac and cheese, olives (my kids love olives), grapes–stuff
Philosophy and Jellyfish Continue reading
Last week, the mauve stinger, Pelagia noctiluca, which has terrorized beaches in the Mediterranean for years, swarmed into a salmon farm, Loch Duart, off the Scottish coast. The berry-sized jellies slipped through the nets that hold the salmon and lodged themselves in the gills of the fish. Loch Duart is located on one of the oldest aquaculture
Who’s Been Naughty? Continue reading
The prize store at the Main Event, a family fun center in a strip mall in north Austin, sucks. And I know I’m not just an aged-out mom on this count. My kids hate it too. They just don’t realize they hate it. My daughter is stuck deciding if she wants to spend her
Rethinking Mother Earth at the Arcade Continue reading
Years ago I visited the Aeolian Islands, the tiny chain that looks like dirt flinging off the the Italian boot after it’s just kicked Sicily. I remember blue seas, incredible calimari, stony beaches, and being simultaneously terrified and thrilled to see ash tossed from an active volcano on the island of Stromboli. This week footage from the seas
Jellyfish Spawn Continue reading
It’s been a colorful week in new jelly species. News media in Australia has been abuzz with stories of a crayon-purple jellyfish that’s been washing up on beaches from the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane to Port Macquarie, half way to Sydney. The peculiar jelly has a bell about the size of a dinner plate and
Mysterious Technicolor Jellies Continue reading
Like me, Iraqi-British artist Athelier Mousawi has found a muse in jellyfish. He paints huge canvases bursting with bright colors and boundaries that scream around curves and screech to a halt at corners. This tension between intertwined organic forms meticulously restrained by clean edges creates a harmonious chaos of color and contour
When you think jelly, don’t you naturally think peanut butter? So it’s conceivable that if you are someone who spends your days working with jellyfish, the wild idea to try to grow your brood on peanut butter might flit through your mind. But the fact that aquarist Zelda Montoya tried it, and
Peanutbutter Jellyfish Continue reading
I walked through the grocery store with a secret. I put the individual cups of mac-and-cheese that I found so repulsive, but that my kids clamored for, in my cart. Still, inside I was smiling. I swung my cart past the boxes and boxes of Technicolor cereal, pulled a cartoon-emblazoned brand off the shelf, and nonetheless gloated. I loaded snack-sized metalized polypropelyne bags of air-riddled, cheese-flavored corn puffs on my pile–and my heart soared anyway. Because I knew something no one else around me knew.