Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Title: Lab Girl Author: Hope Jahren (Audio read by the author) Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2016. Hardcover by Knopf, 2016 (290 pages) Source:  Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more. Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work. Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a br...

No flash fiction this week, due primarily to procrastination. Instead, I'll share some photos I took over the holidays, mostly of water and light (with a few trees thrown in). I have a feeling that until I get some kind of grip on the edits to Death By Adverb I'll be burrowing into the archives for photos on more Fridays that this. [Note: progress is happening on DBA. I have figured out, I hope, most of what needs to be done. Doing it, of course, is always another matter.] Leaves under the surface, their own world.  Mirrors. Treetops I sat on the ground to photograph the twinkling lights in the pussywillow tree. Still trying to figure out why the lights flared that way. Fairy lights I think this is my favorite abstract for the year.

A couple of weeks ago Chuck Wendig presented a flash fiction challenge to write a story in some way involving a tree. I was too busy and distracted to do it then, so today I have a half-flash (just over 500 words instead of my usual 1000) on a tree. The Tree I am the oldest resident of this village, and what I do not know of its people and history cannot be known. When all are in haste and fear, I alone stand calm and unchanged. Yet none now alive have heard my voice. I am the oak that shades the village square, and I have had not one to speak to for many long years. Now there is one who may, at last, linger beneath my boughs long enough to hear my voice. He is still too young for other two-leggers to pay him heed, or even to know himself what it is he hears. But I can begin to tell my history to this seedling, that as he grows old he will remember me. ** I was planted by the hand of a man who loved quiet and rest, though his trade was hot and noisy, with fires—I shudder at the thought...

Chuck gave us another ten random titles this week, and this time I used the random number generator to pick one for me. So, in 1000 words, here is... The Dancer and the Shattered Shell The glade spun past the dancer. His eyes took it all in as a blur of color, motion so fast it ceased to move, became a water-color scarf in which to wrap himself. Alec let himself spin gradually to a stop, watching as the trees sorted themselves back into individual trunks and branches, and smiled. The boys who made fun of him for dancing—had mocked him until he’d retreated to the woods to dance for only the trees—knew nothing. He finished his dance, bare feet tapping the meadow grass, and bowed to his arboreal audience. Alec liked dancing for the trees. When he thought about it, he thought that being forced to the forest was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Panting a little from his dance—the music in his head had been fast, a driving beat that kept him moving—Alec trotted off to the big oa...