This summer I’ve decided to do the Seattle Public Library’s Book Bingo, a great program which really challenges participants to stretch and grow in their reading habits. I’m not usually a nonfiction reader, especially in-season when I can use all the frothy escapism I can get, but I’m really enjoying Nature Obscura by local writer Kelly Brenner, a closely-observed study of urban micro-habitats. I never realized one could find tardigrades, or “water bears,” right here in our Pacific Northwest moss. Tardigrades, I learned from Brenner’s book, are capable of responding to threats by entering “cryptobiosis,” a sort of living-dead state where all metabolic processes are suspended.
Mariners offense remains in cryptobiosis, lose to Orioles 4-3
