Here’s a clip from a mini essay I wrote for The Atlantic: 

“Though pregnancy is a timeless source of narrative conflict, pregnancy tests on the screen are relatively new. Over-the-counter, take-home indicators didn’t hit the shelves until 1988. Before that, aside from obvious symptoms—missed periods and morning sickness—early verification was harder to come by. The 1927 A-Z test (named for inventors Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondak) involved injecting a woman’s urine into an immature mouse or rat. If the rodent went into heat, the woman was “in the family way.” In frogs and rabbits, the same procedure incited ovulation. While frog eggs are expelled from the body and easily visible, injected rabbits had to be cut open and inspected, a practice that gave rise to the euphemism “the rabbit died.”“

Check out the whole thing here!

If I was asked the ideal situation in which to give a public lecture, I still wouldn’t have come up with anything nearly as fun as the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art’s Mixed Taste lecture series. I lectured on drinking water and Scott Kinnamon lectured on Miles Davis. Then, during the Q & A, the audience came up with questions that tied the two subjects together. The whole premise of the program is based on the idea of metaphor, that unrelated subjects can illuminate one another. During dinner, afterwards, I found out that the late poet, Jake Adam York, whose work I admire tremendously, helped found the series eleven years ago. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that a brilliant poet would be behind such a brilliant event.

Here are some photos:

The Holiday Event Center just before the doors opened. Tickets were sold out!

The house band, Oko Tygra, wrote a song about drinking water during the lecture and played it at the intermission.

Scott Kinnamon called Miles Davis “the avatar for cultural malaise.”

Before chlorination, beer and wine were often safer to drink than water!

No Better than Any Other

Yesterday, I watched a girl in City Park
pull out her camera and wait for an egret

to skim away. Patience, I thought. The bird
left. The girl clicked then turned to rummage

through the ash atop a trashcan.
Even if I could tell you, you wouldn’t want

to know, how many butts she pocketed.

read the rest at Sundog lit.