2018 in articles

I wrote about 80 articles for The Revelator in 2018 (the first year that all of my articles appeared in one place, the site I also happen to edit). Here are a few that I think summed up the year:

For Florida Panthers, Extinction Comes on Four Wheels -- a new way for me to look at the annual mortality stats. (I dread looking at 2018's final numbers.)

 

Ghost Cat Gone: Eastern Cougar Officially Declared Extinct -- this came as no surprise (the cougar was last seen 80-odd years ago), but the official announcement still resonated with people.

Is This the Year the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow Goes Extinct? -- not quite, but it's still a bad situation. (A good entry from my series on captive breeding, too.)

Extinction Ink -- a look at a tattoo artist who memorializes endangered and extinct species (I like using the arts as a lens to look at important issues).

Drill, Baby, Drill: The U.S. Added 38 Percent More Oil and Gas Rigs Last Year -- an exclusive detail that no one else seemed to have noticed.

Can Throwing a Tantrum Help Save Us From Climate Change? -- a fun book and a fun interview.

RIP Sudan, the Last Male Northern White Rhino -- I've been writing obituaries for almost every member of this species as it dies out. Painful.

America’s Freshwater Mussels Are Going Extinct — Here’s Why That Sucks -- important stuff (and again, a fresh way to look at it by focusing on captive breeding).

Trump Budget Cuts Could Cause Hundreds of Plant Extinctions in Hawaii -- again, a story just about everyone else missed (plus not enough people write about plant extinction).

Eight Years Until Red Wolf Extinction? -- that timeline still scares me.

How the Golden Lion Tamarin Is Helping to Heal Brazil’s Rainforest -- a nice success story in the making.

It’s No Mystery Why These Crime Novels Are Set in National Parks -- a fun interview about serious subjects.

Inhumanity at the Border — and Beyond -- one of the all-too-few editorials I wrote in 2018. This really resonated with people.

Sorry AC/DC, Rock and Roll Is Noise Pollution -- just a fun way to look at a serious issue.

Murder and Intimidation of Environmental Activists Hits Record Levels -- I tried to focus on both the treats and the people trying to help.

When This Rat Went Extinct, So Did a Flea -- who else but me would write about parasite extinction?

The Trump Administration’s ‘Dishonest’ Attack on Fuel-economy Standards -- a tough one to write, but important. (Great interviews really helped.)

How the Environment Fared in the Midterm Elections -- a great collaboration with my deputy editor, Tara Lohan. (I look forward to following these new officials as they take office next month.)

 

Swampy Thing: The Giant New Salamander Species Discovered in Florida and Alabama -- too cool (and one my most popular articles of the year).

 

2018: The Year Things Fell Apart — or the Year the Tide Turned? -- another editorial. I'm happy with how this one came out. Expect more in 2019. 

 

For all of my 2018 articles -- including a lot of other good ones -- go here. 

And check out the archive on this now-rarely updated blog for similar posts from previous years -- except for last year, which I missed.

2017: My Year in Books

Well, well, well... another year gone by, another few dozen books consumed. This was both a really good and really bad year for me and books. I read quite a few -- 96 books, by my count -- but didn't come anywhere close to my totals for previous years.

Of course, there were a few reasons for that. Most importantly, my new job launching and editing The Revelator dominated my time this year. This required me to read a ton of material -- mostly articles -- which didn't leave much time for reading. I'm quite happy with that trade-off.

We also moved again this year, something I would have been happy to skip. Our landlord wanted to move his family back into the house we were renting, so the first half of the year was dominated by searching for a new place to live, packing and moving (and, to a lesser degree, unpacking). Oh well.

All of this meant some of my reading time found itself devoted to shorter material -- graphic novels, comics and short stories. Honestly, sometimes that's all the energy that I had. (But it added up. Last month, in a rare period of binging, I read something close to 250 Spider-Man comics written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by a variety of artists. If I had counted those as their trade paperback collections, my total number of books read for the year would have been much, much higher.)

So anyway, how did the books that I actually got to read pan out? The best -- by far -- was Borne, the excellent post-apocalyptic novel by Jeff VanderMeer. That's an incredible book -- so good I may just re-read it in 2018.

The worst book? Again, by far, it was Frank Miller's latest Dark Knight opus, The Master Race. Holy abomination, Batman, that was truly awful on just about every level.

Other highlights: Critical Critters by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy; the Rachel Rising series by Terry Moore (which I finally got to finish this past year); and the most recent Walking Dead volume (book 28), which I thought was the best of the series so far.

So that's my brief look at my book list for this year. Check out past entries in this rarely updated blog for my lists from previous years. There's some good stuff.

What will this coming year hold? Well, The Revelator is going to dominate my year again -- as well it should, because I'm enjoying the hell out of this job (the hardest and best I've ever had) -- but I'll make sure to carve out some time for a few good books along the way.