Road Writer Blog: Musings from the Travels of a retired scientist, teacher, writer, gardener, and philosopher
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Three Cs to an A: Tips on Writing Science (with real student examples)
When I taught science classes regularly at Minnesota State University Moorhead, I often assigned writing exercises, particularly my “One-Page Science Paper” which engaged students in multiple writes, reviews, and rewrites. My own experience with writing assignments in college had often involved producing twenty or more pages, as though making it longer encouraged better writing. I thought that the opposite might be the case; by limiting the length of the article, as is typical in real science writing for publication abstracts and papers, students could focus on good writing rather than ‘filling up the space,’ which rather encourages a failure to…
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Science Fiction and the RoadWriter Life, Part 1: Finding Trilobites
Today I’ve been thinking about what makes science fiction, science fiction (spurred by my recent publication of a ghost story-science fiction crossover, “A Visit from Old Earth”, in S’more Spooky Stories, published by Owl Hollow Press). Thinking about science fiction makes me think about trilobites (of course), long abandoned barge canals, and my campervan. Let me explain! Everyone has their favorite definition of SF (I certainly have mine—you can read some of my thoughts at Distinguishing Science Fiction and Fantasy and Putting Science Back in Science Fiction). However, sadly, in recent years, science fiction has come to mean techno fiction. …
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Finding Truth in a Post-Truth, Fake-News World—Part 1, observation, reasoning, and investigation
It is now winter in Minnesota (we had a HIGH temperature of 19 below zero Fahrenheit a week or so ago!), and our campervan, although fitted with a solar-panel-powered electric blanket and a small propane heater (including appropriate propane and CO monitors), can’t keep us warm when it gets that cold. Thus, Mary and I have “garaged” our campervan for the season and are staying home, writing, quilting, and working on landscaping constructions in the basement. And thinking about the state of the world and its problems with truth. I really should avoid doing that last one as there’s a…
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WIP Snippet
One of the delightful discoveries of our retirement campervan travels has been that, with power from our onboard solar panels, we can actually do work while we travel, preparing lessons for courses we are still teaching, getting ready to offer science teacher workshops, and others. We can also work on our special projects, Mary cross-stitching and me writing. In my first year plus of retirement, I’ve written four crossword puzzles (for earth science magazine, EOS), worked on two small ‘wisdom’ pieces that I’ve been tweaking away at for some years, completed two new short stories, plus one new novel and…
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Spontaneity: Joy of the Road!
My wife and I began planning our joint retirement four years in advance (calling those four years our freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years of retirement, building up to a sense of beginning rather than ending). As the senior year marched toward graduation, we decided that it would be great fun to get a little campervan to facilitate our travels during retirement. Our parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren were quite scattered around the country, and a campervan would make it easier to stop for a visit and not inconvenience them by being underfoot, and would allow us to camp, hike,…