The lecture hall overflows with middle-school girls and their parents one Saturday morning in February. Images flash across three big screens at the front of the room. Suddenly, a giant face of Albert Einstein pops up, filling the screens with the scientist’s wild white hair and huge, fuzzy mustache.
Ambling along the oaky trails at Finley Wildlife Refuge last Saturday morning — one of the first days without rain in a long, long time — my two friends and I paused at the edge of a pond along Woodpecker Loop. Just under the murky surface, several rough-skinned newts were swimming in slow motion, their bodies undulating in rhythm with the rippling of the water and the dappling of the sun.