Amphibians are one of the latest groups of organisms to show us changes are afoot on the landscape. They're susceptible to a lot of things that would be good for us to pay attention to. If you're losing them, you start to look at why. Is the landscape changing, and for what reasons? And are those reasons going to affect us, too?

They have a sort of opportunistic component to their life history pattern that's much more flexible than others.

The sensitive species, which a lot of amphibians are thought to be, are in short supply. We have a couple of listed species - the California red-legged frog and the California tiger salamander - and they've largely been chased out of the valley bottoms where humans like to live.

As we study at the U, we want to learn more than what our majors are teaching us. The classical guitar is portable and easy to start, since it is a lot cheaper than piano or other instruments.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

Emptiness felt like a living thing. A parasite growing in the center of your chest, somewhere behind your heart, taking every ounce of warmth and light and happiness and consuming it until there's nothing left. Emptiness feels like exhaustion, like there's no reason to fight, no reason to take another breath, no reason to try to survive. But emptiness also feels like freedom. Because it doesn't just take the good, it takes the bad, too--the anger, the bitterness, the pain--and when it's done, it leaves you with just you. A cold, shell-like echo of yourself, but still you.