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It’s Okay to Pull Back (Or, Confessions of a Would-Be Entomologist)
Friday, I met my student, Gabrielle, on a frosty spring morning to set up traps for her capstone project. Gabrielle is following up on work begun last year assessing the impact of stem nester refugia on native bee communities in prairie remnants at Jerry Smith Park. Sampling in 2020 hit some roadblocks due to the…
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Free Read Fridays: Brothers in Magic
I’m testing the waters with some video content on my Instagram account. Called “Free Read Fridays,” each episode will include a brief (1-minute) reading from a randomly selected page in my novel EOLYN. I will occasionally cross-post here, but the best way to catch Free Read Fridays is to follow me on Instagram. This week’s…
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Year of Gratitude 2021
Even as we continue deep inside the pandemic, 2021 has brought signs of hope. As of this post, new case numbers have dropped dramatically. Campaigns for vaccination are gathering momentum. D.C. politics, despite the continued rants of certain extremists, have calmed. The White House is at last turning away from a personal aggrandizement and toward…
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Farewell, 2020
As this extraordinary year winds down, I find myself reflecting not so much on what 2020 took away, but on the surprise gifts this year left on my doorstep even as it demanded a transformative, dramatic shifts in pretty much everything that I do. Nothing will recover the 340,000+ American lives lost this year due…
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School of Natural and Applied Sciences at Avila U
On some of the many reasons I’m happy and excited to become Chair of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences (SNAS) at Avila University. #AvilaProud #AvilaSTEM #AvilaSNAS
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(Re)Connecting Wild
I promised I’d share some inspiring stories from NACCB2020, so this week I’m embedding the short film (Re)Connecting Wild from NineCaribou Productions. (Re)Connecting Wild documents the efforts of the Nevada Department of Transportation and partners to re-connect an historic mule deer migration route. Projects like these protect wildlife as well as human life and property,…
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Virtual Inspiration
By February of this year, when Covid-19 was just making its presence known in the U.S., my summer calendar was booked. Early June, I planned to attend the Society for Ecological Restoration’s (SER) global conference in Quebec. By midsummer, I would be at Kenyon College in Ohio teaching their summer Young Science Writers program. My…
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Words of Courage, Comfort, and Contemplation
There are small things I can point to as bright spots inside the pandemic. Among these, I’ve discovered the pleasure of podcasts. I know: I’m years behind on this one. I’d never listened to podcasts before March 2020, but being away from the office – and people in general – nudged me into finding new…
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When History Repeats
A year and a half ago, when travel was still a thing, I had the opportunity to visit the great city of Berlin. While there, I spent an afternoon at the Topography of Terrors Museum. Built on the rubble of the former headquarters of the Secret State Police, the Museum commemorates the horrors perpetrated by…
K.R. Gastreich, Author
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K. R. Gastreich, Author 