The Wrack

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/20/2015, and Making It At Home newspaper.

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man at a coastal research center during Maine Coast Week, all the worlds a coast.

Mantoloking, New Jersey, October 30, 2012.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/30/2015. (Continued from Remembering Katrina, Part I.)

Ten years ago this week, Category 3 Hurricane Katrina left nearly 2,000 people dead, hundreds of communities uprooted, and more than $100 billion in damage along the Gulf Coast. Adding in Superstorm Sandys devastation in October 2012, just two events swallowed the equivalent of: five months of Medicare spending, or two years of the federal education budget, or four years worth of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, our national gasoline tax-funded infrastructure bank that is now running on empty. So much money, washed out to sea.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/23/2015.

Perhaps a butterfly flapped its wings in Hong Kong, or perhaps the gods who play dice with the sky rolled double sixes. Whatever the cause, the atmospheric disturbance that formed over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23, 2005, would go on to have massive effects.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/9/2015.

My car, a Volkswagen Jetta with a diesel engine, generates 140 horsepower. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to ride in a horse-drawn carriage down I-95 to my office at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, towed by 140 horses. Using eight feet as the average length of a horse, and pairing the horses together, my anachronistic folks wagon would rumble along behind an equine train more than 560 feet long.

I wonder what our top speed would be.

Jeremy Miller embraces the long view. His projects depend on it. As lead technician for our system-wide monitoring program (SWMP), as state coordinator for monitoring marine invasives (MIMIC), and as lead scientist on the reserves larval fish study, Jeremy adds pieces to puzzles without predefined shape. He knows that patterns begin to emerge only after years of methodical, meticulous data collection.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 6/21/2015.

As I stood in the kitchen of my New York apartment coming to grips with the news of my fathers sudden death, something spooky happened. One of my fathers favorite tunes, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from the Monty Python film The Life of Brian, began playing. My father had been found dead only hours before, and now a clear reminder of him was spontaneously emanating from some luggage in the corner.

I assumed it was a cell phone ringtone, but standing there, in that most alone moment of my life, I had no explanation for why someone would be phoning a suitcase, or why my fathers song was suddenly playing.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 5/24/2015.

The small bird my boys found in the backyard last weekend was olive green with an orange crown like a dirty hunters hat. It showed no signs of violence, but it was definitely dead. No rigor mortis, so it wasnt a winter casualty emerged from the snow. &thats as far as our CSI: South Portland investigation went before I got a shovel and buried the bird six inches under. My seven-year-old placed a cantaloupe-sized rock over the grave and we went on with our day.

It was only after going back inside that evening that I began to wonder what species of bird it had been.

For the past thirty years (and counting), each month has been warmer than its average. We may remember, year to year, locally colder Januarys or cooler Julys, but around the world, our collective thermometers have not seen a dip for 360 straight months. 

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 2/22/2015.

I learned a new word this year. Subnivean, from the Latin for under (sub) and snow (nives). Its the zone within and underneath the snowpack. Its where weve all been living lately.

WELLS, Maine, December 8, 2014  Scientists from around New England met at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve on December 5 for a workshop focused on blue carbon science and policy. For the first time, scientists from throughout the region gathered to share research results, identify gaps in knowledge, and plan future collaborations involving carbon in coastal habitats.

The term blue carbon refers to the ability of salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangrove forests to take up and store carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Coastal wetlands capture carbon and store it at rates even greater than rainforests.

Carbon held naturally in coastal wetlands is not entering the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, so these habitats have real potential to mitigate climate change, said Dr. Kristin Wilson, Wells Reserve research director, who co-coordinated the workshop.