Anna Henkens Schmidt

How much would you charge to blow into a dog’s mouth? Keep in mind that the going rate is between $500-$700. Why the range? I wondered the same thing.  What constitutes the extra $200?  The number of breaths transmitted to the canine? Or is it a per minute rate? And what happens if the dog requires resuscitation beyond the $700 mark?  These were the questions I faced at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when dropping off the beloved family dog for a tooth extraction. The woman at reception slid a paper across the desk.  “Because anesthesia is involved, consent is required if you’d like CPR performed on your dog in case of an emergency.” I looked at the boxes. Box One: Yes ($500-$700) Box Two: No (Dead dog) Okay, the dead dog in parenthesis was my personal addition, but it was implied. I looked between the empty boxes and the quivering dog at my feet. Even though I grew up as a farm girl in western Nebraska, I have to admit the dog has wormed his way into family member st...

The moon captivates and incites imagination. It transforms humans into werewolves, stabilizes our seasons, amplifies magic, tracks our time, and pulls the oceans toward the coastlines. Both real and imagined, humanity has bestowed great power on the great, orbiting rock. It's beautiful and otherworldly and yet it belongs to all of us. Together we watched the footage from Artemis 2 and our fascination with the moon grew. The four astronauts flew farther from Earth than any humans in more than fifty years, and as they swung around the far side of the moon, something remarkable happened. The sun disappeared behind it, its corona forming a glowing halo around the darkened lunar surface. Even from 252,756 miles away, the moon could not shine on its own. With our eyes so focused on the beauty of the moon, we can lose sight of the true power behind it. Because without the sun, the moon would be nothing. Sure, it'd still be held in orbit by Earth's gravitational pull, but no one wo...