I’m back in the basement collection of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Benthic Invertebrate Collection this week. Not literally, alas, but channeling row upon row of jars filled with bottom-dwelling spineless creatures from the world’s oceans and drawing upon photos from my visit earlier this year. I’m not striving to bring these brittle stars and sea stars back to life on the page, but rather to highlight their beauty and understand their complexity. Even though they have been “living” in jars for fifty years or more, I like thinking about how they… Read More