The Scotsman, 17 December 2014, op ed “Saving Bees Can Teach Us Lessons” http://www.scotsman.com/news/mark-winston-saving-bees-can-teach-us-lessons-1-3635984
Valuing Valuation
I learned ecology tramping around the salt marshes of Cape Cod in the early 1970’s, where I was a graduate student in the Boston University Marine Program in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. At that time the word “ecology” was mostly accompanied…
The Road Not Taken
We all have our life-fork stories, those crossroads where we could have gone one way but chose another. I was reminded about one of my road-not-taken moments last week, at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) meetings in Portland, Oregon.…
Pathways to Urban Nature (Seattle times op-ed)
Seattle Times, 10 November 2015, “Pathways to Urban Nature” http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2024979208_markwinstonopedbeesxml.html
The Collaboration Room
I received an unusual honor a few weeks ago: Simon Fraser University named a room after me, the Mark L. Winston Collaboration Room. It generally takes a hefty donation to inspire a university to name a room, a level of…
The Book is Out!
Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive is more or less officially out. Hard copies have arrived in most bookstores and can be found for sale on the usual websites; the e-book will be available 6 October from Amazon and…
Coffee Culture
I’ve developed a coffee house habit in the last few years, doing much of my writing surrounded by the cacophony of hissing espresso machines, moderately loud music, overheard conversations and the clink of glasses and dishes. This new habit surprised…
Writing on the Wall
I am an inveterate collector of quotes, now on my second thick journal full of passages I’ve gleaned from books, newspapers, magazine articles, and conversations. The quote journals are fun to reread occasionally, as the phrases and sentences I’ve selected…
The Feel of a Good Book
I was stunned to receive the first copy of my new book, Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive, in the mail the other day. Stunned because it is beautifully produced physically; in all the tumult of writing and revising and…
On Reading Anne Fadiman
I had to pause after reading the first chapter of Anne Fadiman’s spectacular 2007 book At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays. I had checked it out of the library, but this is one of those books that must be…