What the Color ‘Haint Blue’ Means to the Descendants of Enslaved Africans In the Lowcountry, the unique shade is both protective talisman and source of unspeakable suffering. A haint blue porch ceiling. Beaufort County, South Carolina, a marshy world of low-lying coastal islands, is awash in blue. The cerulean of the skies that darken to shades of cobalt in storm-kissed summers. The blue-gray of the churning Atlantic. The sapphire waters of the rivers and saline estuaries that account for almost 40 percent of the county’s 923 square miles. But while the color blue dominates Lowcountry skies and waters, for centuries it was nearly impossible for human hands to reproduce. Only indigo—a leggy green plant that emerges from the soil in bushy, tangled clumps—can generate the elusive jewel tones. In Beaufort County and elsewhere in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, blue had the power to protect enslaved Africans and […]

Life, in Dog Years My father always pampered his pets. So when he fell ill and moved in with us, it was no surprise that his corgi came to rule our home. What I didn’t expect was for Trilby to care for me after Dad was gone. Trilby at the author’s Houston home on February 25, 2019. Photo by Matt Rainwaters. My father came to live with my husband, John, and me when he was 86, after he took a tumble on our stairs and broke his hip on Thanksgiving Day 2013, just before 26 of our friends were set to arrive for dinner. The fall was probably fortuitous, because his memory was already slipping, and leaving him alone in his apartment was becoming increasingly challenging. John, who often knows me better than I know myself, noted that we were facing down one of life’s toughest choices: either I could […]

Are Aliens Hiding in Plain Sight? Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognize extraterrestrials if we found them? ‘You can’t hunt for something if you have no idea what it is.’ In July, three unmanned missions blasted off to Mars – from China (Tianwen-1), the US (Nasa’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover) and the United Arab Emirates (Hope). The Chinese and American missions have lander craft that will seek signs of current or past life on Mars. Nasa is also planning to send its Europa Clipper probe to survey Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the robotic lander Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan. Both moons are widely thought to be promising hunting grounds for life in our solar system – as are the underground oceans of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Meanwhile, we can now glimpse the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets that orbit […]

Catastrophic wildfires are spewing smoke all over the West Coast. This website lets you track the respiratory crisis in real time—with a few caveats. WHEN I WOKE up on Wednesday morning, I thought my phone was wrong when it showed the time as 7:45. So I checked my watch and my microwave—both 7:45. It was nearly dark out and not because it was dawn, but because the San Francisco sky was choked with wildfire smoke, turning the landscape a Blade Runner dark orange. As I’ve done first thing every morning for the past several weeks during California’s unprecedented outbreak of wildfires, I checked the website PurpleAir—my rock in this summer’s churning Sea of General Awfulness. Drawing crowdsourced data from air quality sensors it sells to the public—ranging between $200 and $300—PurpleAir builds maps that show in real time just how bad a neighborhood like mine is suffering from particulate matter (PM) 2.5 pollution, the particles […]

What Lockdown 2.0 Looks Like: Harsher Rules, Deeper Confusion Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is becoming a case study in handling a second wave of infections. There are lots of unanswered questions. Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, is grappling with a spiraling coronavirus outbreak that has led to a lockdown with some of the toughest restrictions in the world — offering a preview of what many urban dwellers elsewhere could confront in coming weeks and months. The new lockdown is the product of early success; the country thought it had the virus beat in June. But there was a breakdown in the quarantine program for hotels. Returning travelers passed the virus to hotel security guards in Melbourne, who carried the contagion home. Even after masks became mandatory in the city two weeks ago, the spread continued. And now, as officials try to break the chain of infections, Melbourne is being reshaped by sweeping […]

The 3 Stages of Failure in Life and Work (And How to Fix Them) One of the hardest things in life is to know when to keep going and when to move on. On the one hand, perseverance and grit are key to achieving success in any field. Anyone who masters their craft will face moments of doubt and somehow find the inner resolve to keep going. If you want to build a successful business or create a great marriage or learn a new skill then “sticking with it” is perhaps the most critical trait to possess. On the other hand, telling someone to never give up is terrible advice. Successful people give up all the time. If something is not working, smart people don’t repeat it endlessly. They revise. They adjust. They pivot. They quit. As the saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again […]

Reduce Your Stress in Two Minutes a Day Bill Rielly had it all: a degree from West Point, an executive position at Microsoft, strong faith, a great family life, and plenty of money.  He even got along well with his in-laws!  So why did he have so much stress and anxiety that he could barely sleep at night? I have worked with Bill for several years now and we both believe his experience could be useful for other capable, driven individuals. At one time, no level of success seemed enough for Bill. He learned at West Point that the way to solve problems was to persevere through any pain. But this approach didn’t seem to work with reducing his stress. When he finished his second marathon a few minutes slower than his goal, he felt he had failed. So to make things “right” he ran another marathon just five weeks […]

The police want your phone data. Here’s what they can get — and what they can’t. Phones hold gigabytes of potential evidence, but the government’s ability to access them depends on a patchwork of court decisions and laws that predate the technology. Our lives are in our phones, making them a likely source of evidence if police suspect you’ve committed a crime. But as we’ve seen in recent cases of suspected terrorists with passcode-protected iPhones that Apple refused to help the FBI unlock, it’s not always as simple as getting a warrant and breaking down a metaphorical door. When the key to unlock your phone is in your own mind or on the tip of your finger, it becomes a legal question that judges have to rely on decades-old, pre-modern-technology precedent to answer. And in many places, this question hasn’t yet been answered. Here are some of the main ways […]