Fu-Go: "windship weapon." Photo, via public.resource.org

Seventy years ago, Sunday school teacher Elyse Mitchell and five of her adolescent charges died when they disturbed a Japanese bomb they found in a mountain forest near Bly, Oregon. More »

Vinca minor, or common periwinkle. Photo © Daniel Jolivet, via flickr and Creative Commons

Vinca minor, or common periwinkle. Photo © Daniel Jolivet, via flickr and Creative Commons

She had moved to the area only the year before, lured by the climate, the year-round greenery, and Victoria’s reputation as a city of flowers. Her new home included a garden, with one rocky section that saw little sun. Moss would thrive there, but she wanted something more dramatic. More »

Meteor show. Photo © NASA

Watching the night sky from the western edge of the continent at this latitude at this time of year presents a gamble. Announcements that a full moon would light the way for midnight mass-goers this year overlooked our forecast rain showers and our understandable preference for warm, lit, cosy quarters over damp, dark, blustery venues.

Even on December 21, clouds ruled the night. They blocked views of the annual Ursid meteor shower. If the weather had cooperated, the solar-reflector qualities of the nearly full moon so enjoyed elsewhere would have washed out sightings of falling stars we might otherwise have caught.

Before the Ursids zipped by behind thick cloud cover, we could have tried our night-sky luck with the much more spectacular Geminids. This shower peaked on December 13 and 14. Typically, as many as 120 meteors can be observed each hour at its height. More »

Chanterelle mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a mycorrhizal fungus. Photo © Charle de Mille-Isles via flickr/Creative Commons

November 29—Celebrating a three-tined tribute to the stuff that makes gardens grow seems odd at this time of year. But Global Soil Week, punctuates the end of the U.N.’s International Year of Soils and ends in a trifecta with Saturday’s World Soil Day, relates as much to winter here as it does to places with growing seasons that span the turn of the year.

During Victoria’s damp season, grass gone brown during summer sprouts green, winter heathers bloom, and mushrooms burst forth from the soil.

The chanterelles, pine mushrooms, morels, and other late-year treats are signposts of the complexity and mystery of our coastal soils.

This much we know about soil—we depend on it. To paraphrase the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s website, soil makes possible food, feed, fuel and fibre production. It helps us manage water and prevent drought, and provides supports ecosystem and human wellbeing. Soil does so much for us.

This much we also prefer to overlook. More »

Seeing a patient. Photo © Seattle Municipal Archives

I recently asked Nature Boy when he had last seen a doctor.

He answered, “Not since the final season of House M.D.

Other British Columbians share a similar rate of exposure to medical practice. Most of us are more familiar with characters who take medical license on TV than with doctors licensed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C.

Television physicians, after all, make weekly house calls to our living rooms. That practice has largely disappeared in the real world. More »

Elephant. Photo © Jim Bowen, via flickr and Creative Commons

The killing of Cecil the Lion by big-game hunters in June outraged the world.

Thirteen-year-old Cecil lived in Hwanga National Park, Zimbabwe, where he was a major attraction for wildlife tourists. He may have been lured out of the park prior to being killed.

Yet this is one animal, albeit a charismatic, celebrity critter. Thousands of wildlife crimes occur every year. The World Wildlife Fund estimates, for example, that customs officials intercept ivory from only about 11 per cent of the 50,000 African elephants poached every year.

Here in B.C., officials have helped uncover some wildlife crimes recently. More »

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/monique-keiran-wearing-a-poppy-is-never-unfashionable-1.2106214

I recently visited the Jimmy Choo and Christian Laboutin footwear displays in a much-trumpeted Lower Mainland department store.

When a staff person approached me, I expected the usual “Can I help you?” Instead, the young man gestured at the poppy on my lapel. “This is the earliest I’ve ever seen anyone wear one of those,” he said. More »

Social media have democratized publishing. Now, anybody can spontaneously share their thoughts, opinions, photos, witticisms and criticisms, as well as what they ate for breakfast, with the world.

This accessibility has permitted new voices to emerge, quiet voices to be heard, and the previously unspoken to be said. More »