Featured Book
Distant Greens
Distant Greens travels to the highest golf course in the world, where breathless Tibetan precepts come face to face with the oxymoron of Indian military intelligence. To a golf course in the Amazon rainforest, near the source of rubber, which revolutionized the game. To the Middle Kingdom, to examine claims that it was the Chinese, and not the Scots, who invented golf. And to a volcanic Indonesian course where the Mermaid Queen ensures that “her” sultan always has good weather when he plays.
Distant Greens also travels into the soul of golf, the rituals, the belief that a tetrachaidecohedron-dimple-pattern can make a difference. Why can throwing junk-shop 4-irons provide an insight into the soul? What does a Zen priest in Japan hope to teach his acolyte golfers? Why do people cheat? Why do golfers remember the bad shots instead of the good shots? And why is golf more important, to some folks, than sex?
Featured Photos
Featured Articles
The Girl by the Side of the Road
THE GIRL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD Thirty years on, searching for the girl whose eyes said “I’m going to surprise you.” LADAKH, India In 1979 I took a black and white photo of a young girl in Ladakh. She was perhaps ten. She wore a rough robe of homespun wool, she […]
News & Events
10 November — Opening of COP 30 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Ah, yet another international gathering to discuss progress in addressing the problem of climate change. This year it will be held in Belém, Brazil, and the participants will also focus on nature conservation in the country, including the vast Amazon region. I’ve been following Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace for some 50 years, including a […]
Intro to a speculative biography of Ali
My speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant, was honored as the Best Historical Book of 2024 by the United States Peace Corps Writers. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction. Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird Intro to a speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant in the Malay Archipelago […]
Alfred Russel Wallace and Things That Go Bump in the Night
Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for his scientific achievements — collecting and documenting hundreds of new species of “natural productions,” major insights into biogeography, island endemism, and cultural anthropology, and notably, his development of a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of and prior to that of Charles Darwin. But Wallace was also […]