It was indeed a sad day when I had to bring up a video online to prove that fireflies do indeed exist and to show what a field of them looks like at night. Seventeen students of twenty-two had never seen a firefly. Never even heard of them. Never caught one to slide into an empty jam jar, never had one glow in their sweaty hands. This was in a suburban town where fireflies regularly crowd the edges of less-frequented roads. And it’s not just these children. The number of my students who can tell the difference between, say, a maple leaf and an oak leaf has dwindled in my college-level
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