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“It’s not quantum mechanics” may often be heard, a remark informing the listener that whatever they are concerned about is nowhere near as difficult, as abstruse, as complicated as quantum mechanics. Indeed to non-physicists or non-mathematicians quantum mechanics must seem virtually impossible to appreciate – pages of incomprehensible algebra buttressed by obscure or frankly paradoxical “explanations”.

The post Quantum mechanics – a new lease of life appeared first on OUPblog.

Sure, imagination is powerful. But can it really change the world? Indeed, it is tempting to answer “no” here -- to disagree with Glaude about the transformative power of imagination. After all, imagination is the stuff of fancy, of fiction, of escape. We daydream to get away from the disappointing monotony of daily life.

The post The power of imagination appeared first on OUPblog.

Einstein has had a good month, all things considered. His century-old prediction, that the very fabric of space and time can support waves travelling at light-speed, was confirmed by the LIGO collaboration. More, the bizarre and horrifying consequences of his theory of gravity, the singularly-collapsed stars that came to be called ‘black holes’, have been directly detected for the first time.

The post Questions, questions, questions… appeared first on OUPblog.

The remarkable detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO collaboration recently has drawn much attention to the fundamental and intriguing workings of gravity in our universe. Finding these gravitational waves, inferred to be produced by merger of two stellar mass black holes, has been like listening to the very distant sound of the universe.

The post What black hole collisions reveal about the universe appeared first on OUPblog.

Quasars are distant galactic nuclei generating spectacular amounts of energy by matter accretion onto their central supermassive black holes. The precise geometry and origin of this huge activity are still largely unknown, and direct spatial resolution of the emitting regions from such distant monsters is not currently possible.

The post An efficient way to find monsters with two faces appeared first on OUPblog.

A short film celebrating the centennial of Einstein's theory of General Relativity.

The post ‘Einstein100 – General Relativity’ by Eoin Duffy appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

There was much more to Max Planck than his work and research as an influential physicist. For example, Planck was an avid musician, and endured many personal hardships under the Nazi regime in his home country of Germany.

The post Max Planck and Albert Einstein appeared first on OUPblog.

Albert Einstein’s greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, was announced by him exactly a century ago, in a series of four papers read to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in November 1915, during the turmoil of the First World War. For many years, hardly any physicist—let alone any other type of scientist—could understand it.

The post Einstein’s mysterious genius appeared first on OUPblog.

November 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. This theory is one of many pivotal scientific discoveries that would drastically influence our understanding of the world around us.

The post How and why are scientific theories accepted? appeared first on OUPblog.

This November marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein completing his masterpiece of general relativity, an idea that would lead, one world war later, to his unprecedented worldwide celebrity. In the run-up to what he called “the most valuable discovery of my life,” he worked within a new sort of academic comfort.

The post Max Planck: Einstein’s supportive skeptic in 1915 appeared first on OUPblog.

I have to say that several generations of this family have been greatly inspired by Albert Einstein. On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne, Illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky is a brilliant work of art and incredible simple, clean and concise storytelling leaving the reader inspired and ready to embrace their own questions to discover the awe and wonder that lay behind them.

{click to tweet} “Suddenly he knew there were mysteries in the world-hidden and silent, unknown and unseen.”

From the very beginning Albert was unique. He couldn’t talk until he was 4 years old. When he did start talking he couldn’t stop asking questions. His father gave him a magnet and he wondered why and how it always pointed north. He became fascinated with light and sound, heat, gravity, but most of all numbers. Albert loved number. They were like a secret language for him.

He asked tons of questions and even with all of those questions he kept wondering, so he kept reading and learning to find answers to those questions.

After Albert graduated from college he wanted to teach all of the subjects that fascinated him.  But he couldn’t find a job as a teacher so he worked in a government office instead. Still even as an adult, Albert kept asking questions. Whether watching a lump of sugar dissolving into tea or smoke from his pipe swirl and disappear. Albert kept asking “how does that happen?”

As he continued to think and ask, Albert thought about the idea that every single thing is made of teeny, tiny bits of stuff called atoms.

He continued to think about atoms which led to him thinking about motion and the idea that everything is always moving. All of these thoughts about movement led him to incredible ideas and thought about time and space.

Albert sent his new found ideas to magazines which would publish and print anything Albert wrote. Soon he was asked to teach. Now, finally everyone thought Albert was a genius. He could spend his days imagining, wondering, figuring, and thinking.

He loved to think in his sailboat. He loved to play violin. He said it helped him think even better.

Did you know that Albert even chose his clothes for thinking ? He even word his shoes without socks. He said now that he was a grown up, no one could tell him he had to wear socks. He loved to walk and wander around, often times while eating an ice cream cone.

While doing all the things he loved, he tried to figure out the secrets of the universe and that beam of light he rode on a long time ago as a child.

Albert figured out that NOTHING could move faster than a beam of light.

Until his very last breath “Albert asked questions never asked before. Found answers never found before. And dreamed up ideas never dreamt before.”

His wondering, thinking and imagining helped us understand our universe like no one else has.

This book is a must have for the family library. It’s an incredible biography told in a very artistic and captivating way.

Something to Do

Magnets: Make your own Compass

To always keep yourself pointing north, make your very own compass. Here’s a great one from Steve Spangler.

Nearly everything you wanted to know about Magnets

Here are some really fun and entertaining activities to do with magnets, as well as an overview into the world of magnets.

Scavenger Hunt

Don’t forget to do a magnet scavenger hunt around the house. Give your children a magnet and have them search all over the house for things the magnet sticks to. Have write or bring those things back to “home base” to see what magnetic items are laying around your house.

Light and Sound

Enjoy learning about light and sound on this incredible experiment page. This will create hours of fun for you and your family.

Gravity

There is something for everyone on Gravity Day. This page has overviews and activities for all age groups.

Numbers

Wanting to know more about numbers? Want to improve or learn some math? From the very beginning I have always been so impressed with Khan Academy. It started with Sal Khan sending his niece math tutoring  help over youtube videos. Then everyone started watching them and working their way towards math comprehension. Now Khan Academy is being used all over the world not only as math tutoring but math instruction. They have other courses as well in science and language. Little by little I’ve been bringing back my own math skills by following their learning map. It’s an incredible program and it’s absolutely FREE. Want to wonder about numbers just like Albert Einstein? Head on over to Khan Academy.

Don’t forget our ginormous Back to School Library Book Bundle Giveaway!

Right on time for back to school, KidLit TV is teaming up with Pragmatic Mom, Jump into a Book, Franticmommy and Multicultural Children’s Book Day to give parents, teachers, and librarians a chance to win a multicultural book bundle for their school library.

School libraries play an integral role in the life of students. Many students can cite their school library as a place where a love of reading and learning is fortified. Throughout the country, budgets for school programs are being slashed, school libraries have been heavily hit. Hours for library time are cut in some schools, and non-existent in others. Furthermore, the tight budget impacts a school librarian’s ability to secure funds to purchase new books.

GO HERE to enter to WIN!

The post On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Nick Pitarra helps to kickoff the new comic John Flood this week with another one of his stellar variant covers. His intricate line work channels the work of comics legends Geoff Darrow and Seth Fisher, but at the same time Pitarra brings his own brand of mirth and mayhem to the stage!

Proving that artists should take art contests seriously, Pitarra was famously discovered from his submission to the 2007 Comic Book Idol competition. Apparently, superstar writer/artist Jonathan Hickman was so impressed by Pitarra’s work that he later offered him the job as artist on The Manhattan Projects, which would go on to be a multi-Eisner nominated fan favorite hit!

The Manhattan Projects, a satirical, mind-bending re-imagining of what happened after Albert Einstein and his team built the Atom Bomb, is still going strong today. The series just kicked off Volume 2 and Nick Pitarra’s work continues to get better and better. He’s also become one of the top cover illustrators for a slew of special variant covers for a wide range of titles including Red Skull, Weirdworld, And Then Emily Was Gone, Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

You can get the latest Nick Pitarra news & art on his twitter page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

Art Institute of Chicago, photo by Vicky Lorencen

When you’re stupborn, you’re stupid and stubborn. I know because that’s what I am. At least that’s what I surmise. The lab tests are inconclusive, but a decade of firsthand observation cannot be ignored.

After more than ten years of writing, revising, reading, work-shopping, conference-going, networking, critique-grouping, class-taking, submitting and querying, I am still without a book contract. A smarter, less bull-headed person would have given up by now.

And why not? No one is forcing me into this pursuit. It’s self-inflicted without question. Yet, here I am peering into the shiny, giddy-go-lucky face of a new year and I am trudging ahead. I am not buoyed by hope or spurred by optimism. In fact, I feel quite hopeless. But my chronic stupbornness will not permit me to retreat or resign.

How about you?

Are you stupborn too?

You are? Oh, bless your heart. You need a cookie and a nap. But first, I’ve culled these quotes to encourage you:

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. ~  Jane Austen

I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I’ll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone’s lapel and make them confess to me and to all. ~ Jack Kerouac

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed. ~ Albert Einstein

Happy New Year, my dear, sweet, stupid, stubborn friends. (And yes, yes, certainly, warm wishes to my smart friends too.)

Let’s show 2015 what we’re made of!

The iconic actress Marilyn Monroe may have played the role of a ditzy blonde in many films, but she was actually quite the bookworm whose reading preferences included books by James Joyce and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Open Culture has more: “Once married to playwright Arthur Miller, Monroe stocked about 400 books on her shelves, many of which were later catalogued and auctioned off by Christie’s in New York City.”

Library Thing has made a list of 261 titles that were a part of Monroe’s personal library. Books on the list include: Out Of My Later Years by Albert Einstein; Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert; The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner; as well as poetry collections from Robert Frost, John Milton, and Edgar Allen Poe, among others. (Via Gothamist).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

By Dean Falk, Fred Lepore, and Adrianne Noe

Imagine that you return from work to find that a thief has broken into your home. The police arrive and ask if they may dust for finger and palm prints. Which would you do? (A) Refuse permission because palm reading is an antiquated pseudoscience or (B) give permission because forensic dermatoglyphics is sometimes useful for identifying culprits. A similar question may be asked about the photographs of the external surface of Albert Einstein’s brain that recently emerged after being lost to science for over half a century. If asked whether details of Einstein’s cerebral cortex should be identified and interpreted from the photographs, which would you answer? (A) No, because to conduct such a study would engage in the 19^th century pseudoscience of phrenology or (B) Yes, because the investigation could produce interesting observations about the cerebral cortex of one of the world’s greatest geniuses and, in light of recent functional neuroimaging studies, might also suggest potentially testable hypotheses regarding Einstein’s brain and those of normal individuals. Lest you think this is a straw man (or Aunt Sally) exercise, more than one pundit has recently invoked the phrenology argument against studying Einstein’s brain. For example, one blogger opines, “I hope no one cares about Einstein’s brain. By this I mean his brain anatomy.” The three of us who were privileged to describe the treasure-trove of recently emerged photographs opted for B.

We did so because various data support studying the variation and functional correlates of folds (gyri) on the surface of the human brain and the grooves (sulci) that separate them. For example, David Van Essen hypothesizes that tensions along the connections between cells that course beneath the surface of the brain explains typical patterns of convolutions on its surface. Disruptions in the development of these connections in humans may result in abnormal convolutions that are associated with neurological problems such as autism and schizophrenia.  Representations in sensory and motor regions of the cerebral cortex may change later in life as shown by imaging studies of Braille readers, upper limb amputees, and trained musicians, and sometimes these adaptations are correlated with superficial neuroanatomical features such as an enlargement in the right precentral gyrus (called the Omega Sign because of its shape) associated with movement of the left hand in expert string-players. Indeed, Einstein’s right hemisphere has an Omega Sign (labeled K in the following photograph, for knob), which is consistent with the fact that he was a right-handed string-player who took violin lessons between the ages of 6 and 14 years. The aforementioned blogger supports his opposition to studying Einstein’s cerebral cortex with the observation that “assuming causality with correlation” is “a cardinal sin of science”. However, this old saw does not mean that correlated features are necessarily causally unrelated. The functional imaging literature on the cerebral cortices of musicians and controls suggests that Einstein’s Omega Sign and his history as a violinist were probably not an unrelated coincidence.

Superior view of Einstein’s brain, with frontal lobes at the top. The shaded convolution labeled K is the Omega Sign (or knob), which is associated with enlargement of primary motor cortex for the left hand in right-handed experienced string-players.

The investigation of previously unpublished photographs of Einstein’s brain reveals numerous unusual cortical features which suggest hypotheses that others may wish to explore in the histological slides of Einstein’s brain that surfaced along with the photographs. For example, Einstein’s brain has an unusually long midfrontal sulcus that divides the middle frontal region into two distinct gyri (labeled 2 & 3 in the following image), which causes his right frontal lobe to have four rather than the typical three gyri. An extra frontal gyrus is rare, but not unheard of. Einstein’s frontal lobe morphology is interesting because the human frontal polar region expanded differentially during hominin evolution, is involved in higher cognitive functions (including thought experiments), and is associated with complex wiring underneath its surface. These data suggest that the connectivity associated with Einstein’s prefrontal cortex may have been relatively complex, which could potentially be explored by investigating histological slides that were prepared from his brain after it was dissected.

Tracing from photograph of the right side of Einstein’s brain taken with the front of the brain rotated toward viewer. Unusual sulcal patterns are indicated in red; rare gyri are highlighted in yellow.

 The microstructural organization in the parts of the cerebral cortex that are involved heavily in speech (Broca’s area and its homologue) were shown to be unique in their patterns of connectivity and lateralization in the genius Emil Krebs, who spoke more than 60 languages. That study, however, did not include information about the gross external neuroanatomy in the relevant regions. Functional neuroimaging technology is making it possible to explore the functional relationships between variations in external cortical morphology, subsurface microstructure including neuronal connectivity, and cognitive abilities. In other words, scientists should now be able to analyze form and function cohesively from the external surface of the cerebral cortex into the depths of the brain. Pseudoscience this is not.

Dr Dean Falk is the Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University and a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dr Fred Lepore is Professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, New Jersey. Dr Adrianne Noe is Director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland. You can read their paper, ‘The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs’ in full and for free. It appears in the journal Brain.

Brain provides researchers and clinicians with the finest original contributions in neurology. Leading studies in neurological science are balanced with practical clinical articles. Its citation rating is one of the highest for neurology journals, and it consistently publishes papers that become classics in the field.

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Image credits: Both images are authors’ own. Do not reproduce without prior permission from the authors.

The post Examining photographs of Einstein’s brain is not phrenology! appeared first on OUPblog.

We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs boson. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”, “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, and “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”

By Jim Baggott

Through thousands of years of speculative philosophy and hundreds of years of hard empirical science, we have tended to think of mass as an innate property (a ‘primary quality’) of material substance. We figured that, whatever they might be, the basic building blocks of matter would surely consist of microscopic lumps of some kind of ‘stuff’.

But this is not quite how it has worked out. There was a clue in the title of one of Albert Einstein’s most famous research papers, published in 1905: ‘Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?’ This was the paper in which Einstein suggested that there was a deep connection between mass and energy, through what would subsequently become the world’s most famous equation, E = mc².

We experience the mass of an object as inertia (the object’s resistance to acceleration) and Einstein was suggesting that the latter is determined not by mass as a primary quality, but rather by the energy that the object contains.

So, when an otherwise massless particle travelling at the speed of light interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. The field ‘drags’ on it, as though the particle were moving through molasses. In other words, the energy of the interaction is manifested as a resistance to acceleration. The particle acquires inertia, and we think of this inertia in terms of the particle’s ‘mass’.

In the Higgs mechanism, mass loses its status as a primary quality. It becomes secondary — the result of massless particles interacting with the Higgs field.

So, does the Higgs mechanism explain all mass? Including the mass of me, you, and all the objects in the visible universe? No, it doesn’t. To see why, let’s just take a quick look at the origin of the mass of the heavy paperweight that sits on my desk in front of me.

The paperweight is made of glass. It has a complex molecular structure consisting primarily of a network of silicon and oxygen atoms bonded together. Obviously, we can trace its mass to the protons and neutrons which account for 99% of the mass of every silicon and oxygen atom in this structure.

According to the standard model, protons and neutrons are made of quarks. So, we might be tempted to conclude that the mass of the paperweight resides in the masses of the quarks from which the protons and neutrons are composed. But we’d be wrong again. Although it’s quite difficult to determine precisely the masses of the quarks, they are substantially smaller and lighter than the protons and neutrons that they comprise. We would estimate that the masses of the quarks, derived through their interaction with the Higgs field, account for only about 1% of the mass of a proton, for example.

But if 99% of the mass of a proton is not to be found in its constituent quarks, then where is it? The answer is that the rest of the proton’s mass resides in the energy of the massless gluons — the carriers of the strong nuclear force — that pass between the quarks and bind them together inside the proton.

What the standard model of particle physics tells us is quite bizarre. There appear to be ultimate building blocks which do have characteristic physical properties, but mass isn’t really one of them. Instead of mass we have interactions between elementary particles that would otherwise be massless and the Higgs field. These interactions slow the particles down, giving rise to inertia which we interpret as mass. As these elementary particles combine, the energy of the massless force particles passing between them builds, adding greatly to the impression of solidity and substance.

Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog posts.

On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”, “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, and “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”

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The science and even the popular press are filled with excitement at the moment after the OPERA experiment at Europe’s giant particle physics laboratory, CERN (to which I applied for a summer job when I was 16, but that’s another story). Apparently, neutrinos sent from CERN and captured at Italy’s INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory about 730 km away are arriving faster than scientists thought physically possible – faster than the speed of light travelling in a vacuum.

I had to write about this because the news reporting has really annoyed me. Every announcement has said that Einstein might be wrong because he (special relativity) says nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum. Poppycock! (As I’m being polite.) What the theory says is that nothing that has what scientists call “rest mass” can travel at the speed of light – there isn’t any block on things travelling faster. It’s always slightly surprised me that in a discipline where mathematical physicists are used to things called discontinuous functions, I rarely hear of people willing to accept that something could go from “slower” to “faster” without having to “equal”, but it might be possible.

One argument against travelling faster than light is that, although there are solutions to Einstein’s equations, they contain the square root of minus one which we sometimes call an “imaginary” number (as opposed to other numbers that are called “real”). This is a brilliant example of mathematical spin and how it has actually damaged our understanding of mathematics and the universe. There is nothing less real about these imaginary numbers than what are called the real ones. It’s actually by combining both set that we achieve a far deeper understanding of the mathematical and physical universe. But way back when they were first introduced, French mathematician and philosopher Rene Decartes was very distrustful of them so coined the term imaginary as a pejorative description, hoping it would mean they didn’t catch on. He’s got a lot to answer for.

What is a neutrino? Like the similarly named neutron, a neutrino carries no net electric charge (compared with other familiar subatomic particles such as electrons (-1) or protons (+1). Unlike the neutron, the neutrino has almost (but not quite) no mass. Having no charge and almost no mass makes a neutrino extremely difficult to detect.

Back to relativity! Anything travelling faster than light in relativity yields solutions including the square root of minus one which people have interpreted as meaning travelling backwards in time. That’s the reason for the joke that’s currently doing the rounds on the twittersphere:

Barman: “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t serve neutrinos in here.”

A neutrino walks into a bar.

President Barack Obama‘s picture book, Of Thee I Sing, arrived in bookstores and eBook format today. Random House has also released a promotional video about the book.

Here’s more about the book, from the release: “Obama’s poignant words and Loren Long’s stunning images together capture the promise of childhood and the personalities and achievements of the following Americans: Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Einstein, Jackie Robinson, Sitting Bull, Billie Holiday, Helen Keller, Maya Lin, Jane Addams, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Neil Armstrong, Cesar Chavez, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.”

President Obama’s attorney, Robert B. Barnett, handled the negotiations for the manuscript back in 2009. Knopf executive editor Michelle Frey edited the book. Children’s book artist Loren Long provided the illustrations.

continued…

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The brilliant writer Jane Yolen says the secret to why she’s so productive is BIC. Butt in chair. Obviously I’m no Jane Yolen, but I do know she’s absolutely right. I know my own derriere needs to spend way more quality time in the chair in front of my computer. That my fingers need to spend more hours on the keyboard tapping out first, second, and third drafts. But I also know that even though I desperately need to commit myself to more BIC time if I’m ever going to finish anything or start something new, BIC is not enough for me. If I want to get anything written at all, I’ve got to get my bottom out of the chair and out the front door. At least once a day, and preferably more often, I need to get outdoors and walk. To “wonder as I wander out under the sky,” as one of my favorite carols puts it.

I do some of my best work on the streets. When my legs are moving and my lungs are filling with fresh air, words and ideas seem to flow more freely through my mind than when I’m seated in front of my computer, when the former copy editor in me questions every little word before it’s allowed to hit the screen. Those words that do make it down run the risk of being deleted within nanoseconds by this scornful critic.

But for some reason, when I’m walking the tree-lined roads of my neighborhood or the bike path by the Potomac River or even busy streets downtown—as long as I’m putting one foot in front of the other—it’s easier to cut my poor writer self a break. I turn the words and ideas and problems over and around and inside out and upside down and play with them. I dare to try crazy things, to be silly. I talk aloud a lot. If I’m working on a biography, I sometimes address my subject and ask him or her for help. By this point he or she has probably already crawled under my skin. How in the world, Professor Einstein, can I explain special relativity in a way that 10-year-olds will understand? Tell me, Annie Sullivan, how am I ever going to meet my deadline for your book if I can’t come up with a lead? I still get goose bumps when I think of the impatient voice that broke into my thoughts shortly after I asked that question. It was female, with a light Irish accent, and it upbraided me for being such a pitiful procrastinator: "Sure, if you'll stop lingering over the newspaper every morning for hours wasting time on things you don't even remember reading about later, then you'll have time to write my story. And be sure you do it well." Ouch. Annie would have reminded me about BIC, no doubt, but I think she would have also been sympathetic to my need to walk. She was a great lover of nature, and she built much of Helen’s early education around exploring the countryside together.

Lately I’ve had a new partner along for my WOW time. (I just created that acronym and I’m overruling copy-editor self to let it stay in this piece. It stands for Walk Out Words. What do you think? Maybe it should be Words Out Walking?) Anyway, two months ago my family got a new dog, a wonderful 14-month-old golden doodle named Hucksley. He came to us from ICAN (Indiana Canine Assistance Network), a really cool nonprofit organization that my sister works for. ICAN trains and places skilled service d