Julia Soplop's Blog, page 2

The complex interplay between human epidemics and climate isn’t new

People in the U.S. who live in areas with high levels of air pollution are more likely to die of COVID-19 than people who live in areas with lower levels of air pollution, according to the pre-print of a new study by Harvard researchers. The study examined long-term exposure to air pollution. A separate European study also links air pollution to higher COVID-19 mortality rates. In other words, the virus is significantly more deadly in areas where humans have substantially degraded air quality than in areas where humans have degraded air quality less.

On the flip side, reports from around the world are showing one positive consequence of the pandemic: reduced levels of air pollution. Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and fear have kept much of the global population out of cars and off planes in recent months. The burning of coal has decreased. Factory production is down. From China to Italy to the U.S., levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide have fallen since COVID-19 emerged.

While these reductions offer interesting and unusual data sets, they’re likely temporary and won’t have much of an influence on climate change or on the long-term health of residents in areas in more polluted places. Areas of China that were hard hit by the virus, for example, and are now reopening are already seeing emissions creeping back up.

But this is not the first time in history that human epidemics have influenced the environment or the climate. While researching my book, Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History (May 14), I came across a fascinating study published last year in Quaternary Science Reviews, which showed that after Europeans arrived in the Americas in 1492, they wiped out so many indigenous people so quickly through a combination of warfare, resulting famine, enslavement, and disease—though primarily through disease—that they contributed to a change in the global climate. Within a century of European arrival, the study estimates the Americas had been depopulated by 90 percent. That’s 55 million deaths—about 10 percent of the global population at that time.

The event, referred to as The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, was largely the result of not just one but numerous epidemics: smallpox, measles, influenza, and the bubonic plague, followed by malaria, diphtheria, typhus, and cholera. Many of these peoples lived in large, agricultural societies. When they died, they abandoned their cultivated lands, which quickly reforested. The massive number of new trees began to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, lowering global temperatures to a degree that could not be accounted for only by other natural processes, and ushering in the Little Ice Age of the 1600s.

Every early reviewer of my book wrote a note in the margin next the description of the event that said something to the effect of: “Wait, what??? I’ve never heard of this!”

Their comments probably stemmed from the fact that the Industrial Revolution is largely cited as the beginning of human activity that has significantly contributed to climate change. But this study suggests human epidemics were impacting the climate at least 400 to 500 years ago.

A complex interplay exists between human epidemics, the environment, and the climate. In the last few months, we’ve seen that people who live in areas with more air pollution die from COVID-19 at higher rates than people who live in areas with lower air pollution. We’ve also seen that people’s reduced movements during the pandemic have led to reduced air pollution in the short term. But can we expect long-term environmental and climate consequences from this pandemic?

Perhaps. The heavy economic fallout from COVID-19 will likely spur countries to create more stimulus packages to jump start their economies. If these packages include substantial funding to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate other climate risks, as many climate advocates are calling for, we could experience another human epidemic influencing the climate in a significant way.

My interview on Feathered Quill

This post is short and sweet. My author interview with Feathered Quill is live, and you can read it here. I discuss my impetus for writing Equus Rising, what my research entailed, and challenges I encountered along the way. I also give some blunt advice for aspiring writers.

How my book research revealed a personal connection to the wild horses of the Outer Banks

When you start to dig, you never know what you’ll find. In researching the origins of the wild horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina for my book, Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History (May 14), I found something, as a Minnesota native, I could hardly believe—a historic personal connection to them.

Legend has it the small, hardy Spanish horses of the Outer Banks swam ashore from sinking Spanish ships in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. This region is the Graveyard of the Atlantic, after all. It’s littered with more than a thousand shipwrecks, and some of those ships carried horses and lost them to storms. It’s a romantic story, but we don’t have evidence to confirm that any horses survived these wrecks, swam ashore, and procreated.

What we do know is that by the 1650s, European settlers started to move into the North Carolina mainland west of the Outer Banks and north of the Albemarle Sound. This area attracted a unique population mix: formerly enslaved peoples, runaways from the law, Native Americans, and Quakers escaping persecution in Virginia. These settlers were mostly small-time farmers. Many owned horses. In the second half of the 1600s, some of them began to use the Outer Banks as pasture to avoid the need for fencing and the tax England began to impose on fencing in 1670. Eventually, these settlers abandoned many of the horses to the wilds of the barrier island.

As I absorbed this information, I realized the description of this interesting community of people near the Albemarle Sound was vaguely familiar. When I got to the word “Quakers,” my brain lit up. I ran to my living room bookshelf and pulled off a book my great aunt wrote about my colonial Quaker ancestors, the Hill family. Sure enough, they were among the first European settlers in the Albemarle region.

I don’t know whether they had horses or whether they pastured them on the Outer Banks, but it’s possible they put some of the first horses there. Certainly their community did. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or another, but this idea alone made me grow even fonder of these horses and their place in history. I look forward to sharing more about the wild horses of our eastern barrier islands with you in Equus Rising when it’s released on May 14 on Amazon.

You can download a free sample chapter of Equus Rising by clicking here and scrolling to the form at the bottom of that page.

My book research revealed a personal connection to the wild horses of the Outer Banks

When you start to dig, you never know what you’ll find. In researching the origins of the wild horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina for my book, Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History (May 14), I found something, as a Minnesota native, I could hardly believe—a historic personal connection to them.

Legend has it the small, hardy Spanish horses of the Outer Banks swam ashore from sinking Spanish ships in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. This region is the Graveyard of the Atlantic, after all. It’s littered with more than a thousand shipwrecks, and some of those ships carried horses and lost them to storms. It’s a romantic story, but we don’t have evidence to confirm that any horses survived these wrecks, swam ashore, and procreated.

What we do know is that by the 1650s, European settlers started to move into the North Carolina mainland west of the Outer Banks and north of the Albemarle Sound. This area attracted a unique population mix: formerly enslaved peoples, runaways from the law, Native Americans, and Quakers escaping persecution in Virginia. These settlers were mostly small-time farmers. Many owned horses. In the second half of the 1600s, some of them began to use the Outer Banks as pasture to avoid the need for fencing and the tax England began to impose on fencing in 1670. Eventually, these settlers abandoned many of the horses to the wilds of the barrier island.

As I absorbed this information, I realized the description of this interesting community of people near the Albemarle Sound was vaguely familiar. When I got to the word “Quakers,” my brain lit up. I ran to my living room bookshelf and pulled off a book my great aunt wrote about my colonial Quaker ancestors, the Hill family. Sure enough, they were among the first European settlers in the Albemarle region.

I don’t know whether they had horses or whether they pastured them on the Outer Banks, but it’s possible they put some of the first horses there. Certainly their community did. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or another, but this idea alone made me grow even fonder of these horses and their place in history. I look forward to sharing more about the wild horses of our eastern barrier islands with you in Equus Rising when it’s released on May 14 on Amazon.

You can download a free sample chapter of Equus Rising by clicking here and scrolling to the form at the bottom of that page.

Meet the illustrator of “Equus Rising”

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As our May 14 publication date for Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History approaches, I’ll be sharing details about the book each week.

Today I’m delighted to introduce you to the illustrator, Robert Spannring. I’ve been a fan of Robert’s art for years, and as soon as the first chapters of this book began to take shape, I started to think about how his pen and wash style could bring the history to life. I couldn’t believe my luck when he signed on to the project. When you see the nineteen illustrations he contributed, which are more unique and imaginative than I ever could have envisioned, you’ll understand why.

Below you can read Robert’s extensive bio. You can also visit his website to view and purchase his work, including some of the original drawings that appear in the book. You can also find Robert here:

Instagram: @spannringfineart

Facebook: Robert Spannring

robert@robertspannring.com

Robert Spannring has been a professional painter and illustrator for fifty years. Born and raised in Livingston, Montana, he grew up sneaking away from school to draw the landscape and its wildlife and explore what might be around the next corner. He began his career as an illustrator and watercolorist.

He was the Artist-In-Residence at the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park, where his work is exhibited throughout the hotel. He also worked with Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies, providing the interpretive dinosaur illustrations for the Special Museum Exhibits.

Spannring has done illustration work for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (of which he is a founding member), Orvis, Winston Rods, Defenders of Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Boone and Crockett Club, Montana Audubon Council, Roberts Reinhart Publishers, and Sasquatch Books, among others.

Spannring added oil and plein air painting to his artistic repertoire and is now a member of the distinguished Montana Painters Alliance, the Impressionist Society, and the Oil Painters of America. His work has been selected for exhibits and auctions by the Charles M. Russell Museum, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, the Yellowstone Art Museum, the Missoula Art Museum, the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, the Hockaday Museum of Art, the WaterWorks Art Museum, and galleries throughout the West. Spannring’s work is also in private collections throughout the U.S.

Why the Great Epizootic of 1872 should give us hope for change after COVID-19

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The virus swept through nearly every major city in the U.S. and Canada over the course of a year. It killed 1-2 percent of its victims and kept the rest out of work for weeks. Cities grew chaotic. Public transportation ceased to operate. Food shortages and price gouging ensued. Economies ground to a halt.

Sound eerily familiar? There’s a major difference between this event, the Great Epizootic of 1872-1873, and the one we’re experiencing today, however; the Great Epizootic infected horses, not humans.

Throughout most of the 19th century, the horse served as a primary energy source in the U.S. Horses hauled goods, transported people, powered agricultural work, and fueled the Industrial Revolution. In this era before widespread electricity and automobiles, they were essential to business and everyday life.

The Great Epizootic alarmed the human population of the U.S. It wasn’t the first horse disease outbreak to spread through the country—for example, glanders, an extremely contagious and deadly disease, infected 11,000 military horses during the Civil War—but its consequences were far-reaching and impossible to ignore. 

As I’ve been making final edits to my book, Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History (May 2020), in which I discuss the Great Epizootic, I’ve been finding myself drawing parallels between that event and today’s COVID-19 pandemic.

The Great Epizootic, along with other horse epidemics of the last half of the 1800s, spurred structural changes. For starters, formal, accredited veterinary schools began to crop up in the U.S. with the main objective of caring for the horse as a means of protecting the economy. (Yes, providing compassionate care to your sweet family pet was an afterthought.)

Second, having experienced them first hand, people began to understand the economic dangers of complete reliance on an animal that could get sick and taken out of the workforce. To reduce the risk of a Great Epizootic replay, the U.S. needed to find alternative forms of energy. Horse epidemics helped to catalyze the development and adoption of these new energy sources.

The fact that horse epidemics drove societal change is relevant today. Sure, we’re dealing with a human pandemic, but we’re witnessing many of the same consequences horse pandemics caused 150 years ago, including personal and economic disruptions. The resulting shifts following those epidemics give us hope for sweeping improvements in the societal failings COVID-19 has and will starkly reveal.

For as long as I can remember, epidemiologists have been warning us that a pandemic was a “when” not “if” scenario and that our country was woefully unprepared for it. In fact, just five months ago, a draft report evaluating the government’s pandemic preparedness determined our ability to coordinate a response to a pandemic is abysmal. (This report just became public.)

We are unprepared—not because the idea of a pandemic should surprise anyone, but because we often ignore threats that haven’t been a part of our personal experiences. We can think of them as simply hypothetical instead of looming if we haven’t lived through them ourselves.

I’m hopeful that after witnessing firsthand how broken or inadequate so many of our systems are, those of us who come out the other side of this pandemic—and that’s most of us—will demand extensive improvements across numerous sectors. None of us has an excuse to shy away; now, whether we previously understood these problems or not, we’re experiencing them personally. In our businesses. In our homes. In our bank accounts. Below are some of the areas in which I see potential for improvements following the pandemic.

Government: Pandemic/disaster preparedness and leadership
Whether we’ve ever been ready for a pandemic, recent missteps by the Trump administration likely increased our vulnerability: dismantling the National Security Council pandemic team in 2018 (here is a piece from someone who had previously led that team about the role they would have played in handling our response to COVID-19); largely ignoring a draft report released five months ago following a pandemic simulation that declared the U.S. was vastly underprepared to handle a pandemic; canceling the global PREDICT program that same month, which sought to identify, track, and research emerging zoonotic diseases; and initially denying the pandemic was a threat to the U.S when evidence showed we needed to be aggressively working to contain it.

And what happened at the CDC? Who made the deadly decision not to use the WHO test kits or to appropriately scale-up the manufacturing and distribution of our own, rendering us unable to identity, track, and contain cases?

The government can no longer find excuses to brush our pandemic/disaster unpreparedness under the rug and redirect funding away from it. We’re all experiencing the consequences of denial and inadequate preparation. Now is the time for us to demand accountability in this area at every level of government.

U.S Health Care “System” / Lack of U.S. Health Care “System”
We don’t actually have one “health care system” in the U.S. We have numerous dislocated systems, many of which are underfunded and inaccessible to many Americans. Despite increases in coverage due to the Affordable Care Act, 27.5 million people in the U.S. did not have health insurance for the entire year in 2018. Health care costs have skyrocketed, even for those with coverage. This study showed the U.S. spends about twice as much on health care as 10 other high-income countries do, but has the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rate among them. Globally, the U.S. ranks 43rd in life expectancy at birth.

The cracks in our ability to provide adequate health care to all Americans will show up—and already have been—in bas-relief as we analyze the consequences of the pandemic here and compare them to the results in countries with some type of universal health coverage and a willingness to introduce more aggressive public health measures. (South Korea’s management of the crisis has been astoundingly different from our own, for example.) We know our health care “system” lags behind many other countries’, but data may soon provide an even blunter picture that might convince more people it’s time to change our ways.

Emergency Preparedness
Why have hospital administrators not stockpiled masks, gowns, gloves, and ventilators, when they’ve always known a pandemic was imminent? It’s unfathomable, and I don’t have answers for you. (I’m not sure how much of this preparation should fall to the government versus hospitals, but I’m not impressed with the preparedness strategies of either right now.) No medical professional should be forced to confront a pandemic with a homemade mask. I hope the administers at every hospital are reprioritizing future spending right now to adequately protect their staffs.

Telemedicine
Telemedicine is a growing industry, and about half of U.S. hospitals already use some form of it. During this pandemic, many providers have suspended most or all in-office appointments and are providing telemedicine instead. Analyzing the results of this larger-scale deployment of telemedicine could help us to better understand in which conditions it provides the most efficient and effective way to deliver care and improve accessibility.

Anti-Vaxxers 
Anti-vaxxers benefit from the protection of herd immunity—large numbers of people who have been vaccinated or have already been exposed to a disease. But now they’re personally experiencing what happens when a disease spreads in the absence of a protective herd. It’s scary. It’s disruptive. It’s deadly. And it demonstrates what a world without vaccines did look like until relatively recently and would look like again if we reverted back to one. Might this experience shift some views?

Education
I’ve read numerous estimates that those of us with young kids should plan to save several hundred thousand dollars per child to send them to in-state universities. (Here’s one calculator.) For most of us, that number is laughably out of the question. We’ve got to find alternative ways to provide higher education to our children, or it’s just not going to happen.

Distance learning has, of course, been expanding for years, but some universities are hesitant to move their instruction online and make it more financially accessible to greater numbers of people. Now the pandemic is forcing them to teach online. I hope this move to virtual instruction will continue to demonstrate that online education is feasible and legitimate when done well.

Business
About one-quarter of civilian workers in the U.S. don’t have access to any type of sick leave. Perhaps the pandemic has shown companies that if they don’t allow and encourage employees to stay home when sick, they could go to work and spread a plague that could have disastrous implications for the company’s financial future. Society, and the companies within it, benefit when sick people stay home. Will the pandemic serve as a wakeup call for companies that don’t provide sick leave?

Small businesses are already struggling and shutting down after just a week or two without in-person customers. I hope this required “opportunity” to quickly spin up alternative revenue streams or ways to sell their products makes many of these businesses less vulnerable to future disruption.

Climate
We’re already seeing preliminary data that forced lockdowns, and even the encouragement to “shelter in place,” has temporarily reduced dangerous emissions around the world. (You can find some interesting related articles here, here, and here.) More data on this subject will emerge in coming months. I hope climate scientists will run with it both as a means to demonstrate that our collective actions can reduce emissions and to develop creative solutions for reducing emissions in the future.

There is hope yet
The Great Epizootic is just one example of how epidemics have catalyzed significant societal changes. When I begin to feel crushed by pandemic-induced anxiety, I try to refocus my energy towards what comes next. COVID-19, despite the devastation it’s causing across the globe, presents an opportunity to push for improvement. I’m hopeful we can use the momentum that comes from people finally understanding our vulnerabilities on a more personal level to demand structural transformation.



Sources for information on the Great Epizootic and glanders outbreak:
Kheraj, Sean, “The Great Epizootic of 1872–73: Networks of Animal Disease in North American Urban Environments,” Environmental History, 23, 3 (July 2018): 495–52.
Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).

 

 

Becoming a more responsible consumer of health and science news in the age of COVID-19 (and always)

There’s nothing funny about COVID-19. But it’s a little funny that in any crisis, we suddenly think we’ve become relevant experts based on our few-days-worth of news consumption. As a hurricane approaches, we become meteorologists. The wind speed just shifted over the threshold. Now it’s a Cat 5! When an earthquake rattles us, we become seismologists. There’s a 10 percent chance that was just the foreshock, people! And now we’re finding that in the midst of a pandemic, we’re quickly becoming epidemiologists and infectious diseases experts. Who needs a PhD or MD and tons of experience researching and modeling disease spread to figure out what’s going on? Not me!

In crisis situations, many of us tend to suffer from a touch—or full-blown case—of the Dunning-Kruger effect, meaning we overestimate our competence. Many people also overestimate the competence of low-quality information sources that call themselves “news” but don’t report from an evidence-based perspective.

They’re overblowing it. (Said no legitimate epidemiologist on the planet.) It’s the same as the flu. (Said no one who understands the function of a decimal point or how to read a number off a piece of paper.) If I just stay six feet away from other people, there’s no way I can get the virus. (Said no one who understands how little we know about a virus that has been infecting humans for maybe three months and on which we have very little data.)

We can’t afford to go Dunning-Kruger on COVID-19.

So please. I beg of you. Be responsible consumers of health and science news. Don’t overestimate your competence. And understand that guidelines are continuously changing as more data emerges. 

I’ve been out of the science writing game for a while, but my professional training is in medical journalism. (I’m not a medical professional or health sciences researcher.) I’d like to share some things with you that I’ve learned along the way about finding the most reliable sources of health-related information.

GO DIRECTLY TO THE SOURCE

If you’re wondering how we can still know so little about COVID-19 and why guidelines are rapidly changing, let me put the virus’ novelty in perspective. My daughter is allergic to peanuts. A few years ago, she participated in an oral immunotherapy clinical study to desensitize her to peanuts, meaning she started to eat miniscule bits of peanuts each day, then built up that amount over time to be able to tolerate some peanut exposure without reacting to it. The principle investigator of her study pioneered the field of immunotherapy for peanut allergies, beginning about 10-15 years ago. This field of study is still considered young. Just about every time I asked my daughter’s study team a question about her reactions or the long-term impacts of daily exposure to something she’s deathly allergic to, the answer was, “We don’t know,” or “We’re not sure yet.”

COVID-19 has been active in humans for maybe three months. We can expect a lot of “We don’t knows” and “We’re not sure yets” in the coming months from the most respected researchers out there. The patients in China are the first study subjects. The patients in Italy are the first study subjects. Some of us will become the first study subjects.

So how are public officials developing guidelines to help slow the spread of COVID-19 with limited information?

Science is the process of building evidence to develop a clearer and clearer understanding of how something works. The science around COVID-19 itself is very, very young. Researchers aren’t starting from scratch, though. Data on related diseases, such as SARS, another strain of coronavirus; extensive modeling of previous epidemics and pandemics; and increasing data on the spread, mortality rates, and effects on health care systems in countries that are months or weeks ahead of us all contribute to our understanding of COVID-19. 

The best available evidence shows us that COVID-19 is extremely dangerous. As the evidence we collect grows and creates a clearer overall picture, we can expect guidelines for our health and safety to change.

The best we can do is to ignore that Dunning-Kruger-infected neighbor in Florida who says COVID-19 is no big deal and go directly to the sources that collect data, model disease spread, and conduct other research on the disease:

Organizations/Governments

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

World Health Organization (WHO)

Local health departments 

Scientific Journals

This list is not exhaustive; I’m just including some of the journals that have already published important COVID-19 articles. We can expect many more articles soon in many more publications. If you can’t access the full journal article, you will almost always be able to access the abstract. Look at the numbers. Look at the limitations. Look at the conclusions.

JAMA
New England Journal of Medicine
The Lancet

CHOOSE RELIABLE SOURCES FOR SCIENCE NEWS

Newspapers and magazines can help us contextualize studies. When people complain about “the media,” it’s a dead giveaway that they’ve chosen to consume low-quality sources of information. If you consume poor excuses for journalism, that’s all on you. By clicking an article from a low-quality source—even out of morbid curiosity—you’re supporting that publication financially through advertising dollars. (Also, in case it needs to be said, “the media” isn’t a thing. It’s not one entity that acts in concert.)

We’re fortunate in this country to have a free press, which is a cornerstone of democracy. (Democracies don’t function without watchdogs.) But in the digital age, a free press means that alongside serious publications, anyone can throw up a virtual shingle and calls themselves a news source. Back away from the clickbait your helpful high school friend posted on Facebook that actually came from a Russian troll farm. Turn off the TV. (I always recommend reading your news if you can. An article usually offers much more nuance and contextualization than a 20-second TV piece that you didn’t quite catch but now feel confident talking about with anyone who will listen.) Back away from sources that don’t try to operate from an evidence-based perspective. (Good reporting stems from data.)

Solid, seasoned health and science reporters work to pick apart scientific studies, watch for shoddy study designs, examine the data and analyses, dig around for limitations, be skeptical of overly stated implications, identify conflicts of interest, and ask the right people the right questions to figure out what studies really means. They work to translate statistics into digestible language for the non-scientists and non-mathematicians among us. In the case of COVID-19, their articles should be full of qualifying statements, like, “given the available data,” rather than bold, unqualified, definitive assertions. 

Below are some sources often recognized for their reliable reporting on health and science news. (This list is not exhaustive. Some are free. Some have dropped paywalls for COVID-19 coverage.) 

Will they get every story right every time? No. Reporters are obviously only human. Will their reporting evolve with new evidence? Yes. Is an epidemiologist who is trying desperately to figure out how to curb the spread of the disease more likely to take the call of a reporter from a reputable news source than a non-evidenced-based outlet when getting 100 calls a day in a moment of crisis? Yes.

The New York Times (Science section)

NPR (Health & Science sections)

BBC (Science section)

FiveThirtyEight (Fantastic for contextualizing statistics)

Nature News

ScienceDaily

Science Mag

Scientific American

UNDERSTAND THIS PANDEMIC ENDANGERS YOUR LIFE, EVEN IF YOU’RE YOUNG AND HEALTHY

If we don’t “flatten the curve,” we can expect to experience the same health care system overwhelm that Italy is experiencing right now. I’m seeing pleas for everyone to participate in social distancing for the good of the community, particularly the elderly and chronically ill. But I get that many people don’t ever operate for the good of the community.

So I’d like to shift that conversation a bit. Even if you care nothing for the elderly and chronically ill among us, you need to social distance for selfish reasons. We all become vulnerable if we don’t slow the spread of the disease, even if we never contract it ourselves or develop complications from it, for this reason: if the health care system becomes overwhelmed and you get in a car accident or experience an unrelated medical emergency, there may be no medical professional or medical equipment (think ventilators) to keep you alive. This isn’t a hoax. It’s isn’t theoretical. We’re watching it play out in other countries right now.

And if your personal health doesn’t motivate you to act responsibly, maybe your wallet does? Have you noticed any fluctuations in the stock market lately? Have you noticed any other signs the economy could take a nose dive if we don’t contain the pandemic soon and get people back to work?

CONTINUOUSLY EDUCATE YOURSELF THROUGH RELIABLE SOURCES AND DON’T SPREAD HOGWASH 

This entire piece is a plea to act responsibly in this difficult and confusing time. Please go to direct sources for updates. For further contextualization, please consume only reliable news sources that base their reporting on the best evidence available. Please understand that we need to act on the best evidence available at any given time, even if that evidence is slim. Please understand that increasing data will cause public health guidelines to change continuously over the coming months, and you will need to change your own behaviors accordingly. Please try to stave off the Dunning-Kruger effect, people. (Really.) And please, please don’t spread hogwash.

Book cover reveal

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I’m thrilled to reveal the book cover for Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History (May 2020).

The cover photo features a wild stallion from the Pryor Mountains of Montana. Isn’t he gorgeous? I’ve been admiring wild horses for years, but when I began to research this book, my respect for them skyrocketed. I knew we needed one on the cover.

As a journalist by training, I try to write on a level that is approachable to just about any reader. This book will resonate with horse lovers and wild horse advocates. But I also wrote it for any adult or teen interested in reading a unique perspective on how this country came to be. No prior horse knowledge or experience required.

Equus Rising is now available for pre-order on Amazon for Kindle only. The paperback will be available in May 2020.

Welcome to my new website

Welcome to my new website! Please take a moment to explore. You can find my books here, more about my writing here, and my bio here.

This site will serve as a landing place for readers who want to know more about my writing. (You can still to find my photography business at Calm Cradle Photo & Design.) Over the next couple months, I’ll be blogging about preparations for the May 2020 launch of my book, Equus Rising: How the Horse Shaped U.S. History. (You can pre-order the Kindle edition of the book here. You’ll have to wait until May to order the paperback, however.)

On the blog, I’ll be sharing the cover design, selected drawings by the illustrator, some of my own wild horse photographs that appear in the book (like the one above), content previews, and some surprising things I learned during the research and writing process.

Be sure to sign up below for book launch updates and other news. It’s going to be an exciting few months.