Happy Nice Mall

As my first gardening season in many years comes to an end, I am faced with the weighty question of when to harvest my beets.

If you have a beet crop, pulling them off the ground isn’t emotionally charged. If you count the cherry tomatoes, my tomato harvest reached double digits and I picked them with great impatience. Same with green beans. I’ve harvested more than a dozen. Beans.

To be honest with myself, it’s been a weird year. There’s a pandemic, so I’m gardening. Otherwise, I would spend this time commuting to work. Also, I’m about to semi-retire. I was looking for the right word to describe it. After 28 years as a full-time staff member (editor, columnist, reporter, video host) of The New York Times, I am leaving to cultivate my garden. And write about it. i will leave Ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 virus relative to others, maybe. But whether it has anything to do with the crisis of the moment or not, I will continue to write about the weird and interesting corners of science and life that have caught my attention. Then I will try to persuade the editors to publish my “news” version.

Actually, that’s always been my goal. I’ve always thought of The Times’ motto “All Good to Print” as a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule.

I started out as an editor at The New York Times Magazine, but I also occasionally wrote about it. food, slice and alien abduction. I’ve written a lot about dogs, but also Vikings, donkeys and chickens. Linguists owe the first use of the term “uptalk” to me. though actually a friend invented it. I was an outdoor columnist until Masthead realized I was basically. go canoeing and write about it.

I once wrote a column called Side Effects, where I took a deep dive into neuroscience and sneaked a recommendation. Amygdala McBain would be a good name for a James Bond hero. My plan to become a full-time humor columnist was never fully realized, but for about five years I hosted a video feature called ScienceTake, where I said a lot of things like: “Sometimes, those who stay home get all the good plankton.” Well, I thought it was funny. At the absolute pinnacle of my career, I used this as the main phrase for a news story: “Jump, little maggot, jump.”

After I’ve done my little bit to expand the boundaries of what’s suitable for print, I’m ready to do other things like gardening, but I’m a little apprehensive about this plan. Even pumpkin production was very low this year. We ate a few, but we still buy zucchini, which is pretty much unheard of – if you have room to stick a few plants in the ground. What if it’s not just a slight stumble on the way back to earth, but a dark storm cloud on the horizon? (I have never believed in the absolute prohibition of mixing metaphors.) I also think of other pursuits, such as playing the guitar, fishing, building a boat.

The thing is, my guitar playing is very similar to my gardening. Let’s say I can play, but I’m never asked to play. I fish but once got caught by a skunk during a salmon fly escape in the Madison River in Montana. If you’re not fishing, admit it’s not a good day. And although the little boat I made with my father and son remained afloat, there were some problems with the seats on its first voyage. They collapse when you sit on them.

On the other hand, I can always write about these adventures. Do we need another expert garden writer to tell you how to get the perfect soil pH? Or another guitarist who claims that if you’re practically virtuous and dedicated, you too can make impossible straight picks?

I represent the rest of us, the beet grower.

From this perspective, my beet is not a garden bug, but a funny harvest. You can go a long way if you think of a beet as a writing material rather than a vegetable.

Still, the garden-to-table questions remain: Do we eat it as a snack? Does it really have to be the main course of a very light dinner? Can I somehow play my guitar here, like an update to the Depression-era classic “One Meatball”?

When I’ve finished writing the song, I’ll move on to my next gardening task. This will decide when to harvest the pumpkin.

Jim Gorman wrote six books in his spare time and taught science writing at Wesleyan, Princeton, Fordham, and New York University.

In his “retirement” he plans to teach at Wesleyan, maybe write a book or a few, maybe get a dog to replace Sophie, a hybrid who died a few years ago, and maybe even a cat. and spend time with his wife Kate at their home in the Adirondacks.