Among the staff at PSG there are all sorts of talents. There is, of course, great skill in our many publishing services, but everyone’s skills here go beyond those. We have everyone from athletes to musicians and performers. I’m proud of my gymnastics history. I competed on the uneven bars and I loved those dismounts off the bar even if I never quite [...]
Across from the library in the playground where I once played is the first tree I ever successfully climbed. The bark at the base of the tree is stripped and smooth from countless amounts of children who have attempted to clamber up into the branches. I was only able to make it up a few branches, but I still felt like I was [...]
As a child, I was the classic bookworm—there was rarely a time when I was seen without a novel held lovingly in my arms. I fit in well at PSG it seems: My coworkers are proud to call themselves bookworms, too. Let’s peek into the bookshelves of the PSG staff and see what everybody is reading! Historical fiction is trendy in the office [...]
When I see ants running around my yard, I’m usually not impressed. Those little guys seem so vulnerable and can get trampled on so easily. Then again, that was before I knew that several ant species began farming long before humans ever did. Small, black ants, called Philidris nagasau have their own form of farming and have been doing it for around 3 million [...]
During the interview for my first job at a coffee shop, I was asked what my greatest achievement was. Being only 15 at the time, I was hard-pressed for an answer and honestly can’t even remember what I sputtered out. Luckily, my response was good enough and I was hired, spending the next several months learning different coffee combinations and how to perfect [...]
You’re driving to work in the morning, hustling to arrive on time, and suddenly the car in front of you slams the breaks. Annoyed, you poke your head out of the window to see what the problem is and—to your surprise—you spot the tiny, paddling feet of a mother duck and her chicks waddling across the road in a tight line before the [...]
National Portrait Gallery /American Art Museum In the eighth grade, I researched Sam Houston for one of my classes. As a final part of the project, we spent a class period acting out the person we researched. I had never considered anyone I studied that deeply until I was assigned that project. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has a program it [...]
One of the most exciting things about being a parent is witnessing your child’s firsts. There are the funny firsts (his disgusted face with that first taste of oatmeal), the exciting firsts (watching him take those first wobbly steps) and the momentous firsts that make you well up with tears of joy (when he first sleeps through the night). But some of my [...]
As a child, my favorite activity at the beach was digging through the sand for lost objects. Old coins, keys, painted shells and tarnished rings lined the pockets of my beach shorts after a day by the sea. But what if there were an easier way to look at buried treasure, a way without having to get my palms dirty and sand under [...]
We’ve all been bored when we were little as we sat in that chair getting our hair cut. All we could do was worry about what we might look like when it was done.Barbers across the country have found a way to resolve this boredom and also have a positive effect on literacy—having children read aloud while getting their hair cut. Ryan Griffin, [...]