kenn kaufman
grrlscientist | April 20, 2008tags: Flights Against the Sunset, short stories, memoir, birding, bird watching, Kenn Kaufman, book review
When Kenn Kaufman was sixteen, he left home in pursuit of a dream; to see more species of birds in the United States in one calendar year than had ever been seen before. Instead of preventing him from trying to achieve this dream as most people would have done, his parents allowed him to go with their blessing. Now, as an adult, a famous birder and field guide who travels the world, we find Kaufman in a nursing facility in Wichita, Kansas, visiting his seriously ill mother after having…
grrlscientist | May 16, 2006Did you read "coming of age" books when you were in high school? If so, what did you really think of them? Like most people, I read these books but I was unique among my peers because I never liked them, even when I was "coming of age". The authors of those books always struck me as being pathetic self-involved crybabies with no purpose in life beyond whining about "being misunderstood" by the world because the people around them wisely refused to indulge their every desire -- most of which were utterly ridiculous anyway. So I initially hesitated when one of my contacts at Houghton Mifflin…