January 2026

Poem From a Fact-Checker

A craniosacral massage begins with 

the feet.

We can learn without thinking.

The biggest animal on Earth

subsists on one of the smallest.

An adaptation to survive 

can lead to extinction.

Health insurance companies 

can kill people.

Politicians can represent themselves.

Police can be criminals.

Victims of genocide 

can commit it.

A bomb created to end a war 

can destroy a planet.

We are the disease and the cure.

Like computers, we too are created 

to one day self-destruct.

Expect paradox.

January 2023

New in Town

The first time my husband came to the Gulf of Mexico with me, shortly after unpacking on the beach he earnestly inquired, “Who made all these holes?” 

He was asking about the countless crab homes pockmarking the soft, white sand, something so ubiquitous to me I didn’t even notice them anymore. I was thrown by the revelation that someone would not know what they were.

When I moved to Bozeman, Montana, in late summer 2022, I wondered how and when I would feel like this time was different — we were here for good, not for a little while. I’d been visiting for more than a decade, with my now-husband, who was born and raised here and still has family in town and around the state.

I’m from Florida. I know humidity, on Christmas. I expect amphibians clinging to window screens, and alligators in canals, lakes, cold springs and campus ponds. Spanish moss and epiphytes dripping from absolutely everything. An abundance of chit-chat and characters. A year-round life in flip-flops is possible. Prior to Florida, my people lived in West Virginia since before it was a state.

My urge to observe my surroundings is strong. Noticing small things is something a newcomer is naturally good at. I imagine it stems from an ancient safety instinct, a need to assess threats adequately and timely. 

Still, I delight in this because I am wildly curious about the natural world, including people. In my mind, there’s a running ticker of things I see and have yet to sort out, my crab holes in the sand:

-Why do aspen cling to their brown leaves even through subzero temperatures?

-Icicles — their shape, their formation, their duration, peoples’ tolerance of possibly being impaled by one while running out for floss.

-What does “Don’t Tread on Me” mean exactly? I wonder if it’s possible some people intend it to mean protect a person’s right to an abortion. The thing is, I’m afraid to inquire, and is that the point?

The mail sometimes does not come for days or even weeks at a time. Since last year, I’m told. There is no explanation or estimation left in a mailbox for these interruptions. An employee transferred from elsewhere in the state for a temporary shift at the post office — like so many others working here — tells me there is a chronic staffing problem, because “people don’t want to work.” 

I think about how we had to pull out every single privileged stop to be able to buy a modest and overpriced home here, and wonder how anyone with anything less than that is supposed to be able to afford a home to own or rent here. ARE they supposed to be able to live here? I wonder.

This part feels familiar; I have been here before. In Seattle, during its exponential growth as Amazon turned it into a white-collar company town. There, I observed that Amazon doesn’t care about community. It doesn’t care if rising costs send your inner circle to far-flung corners of the state and beyond, in a diaspora of people displaced by money. It doesn’t care about your city. It doesn’t care about your schools. It doesn’t care about your hospitals. It doesn’t care about your people. It doesn’t care about our planet. It cares only for profit. It is an it, and does not feel.

Here, in Bozeman, we are 11 days into winter although it’s been snowing since the day after Halloween. People I meet who find out I’m new here kindly ask how I’m doing with the cold, the snow. Truly, I am fine. I am warm, I am observing, and I am learning. I am grateful to be living here. I am grateful to be healthy. 

I see nearly no one wear a mask in town until well into fall. Then, a few more appear in grocery stores. A handful of places in town seem to foster more mask-wearing: the library, a local bookstore. I wonder how it came to be that the norms here during the pandemic differed from those in Seattle, despite viruses not giving a damn about state lines.

I’m learning to enjoy what snow can show that grass cannot: a rabbit running under a concrete slab at dusk; a cat prowling the perimeter of our fence at night; a child postholing through a snowdrift in early light. I can’t make out the details of these other lives. But I see they are there, ongoing around me.

In the frigid morning, I marvel that our elementary school policy is for students to line up on the blacktop outside unless it’s below zero. I worry on our walk to school about how a small body can stay warm in such cold temperatures. I think about the squirrels I know are underfoot, and who had surprised me in the summertime at playgrounds and parks. 

When we arrive at school, I see children eating snow, throwing snow, jumping in snow, digging tunnels in snow, and — best of all, to me — pushing snow in large chunks around the asphalt; the white on black makes a perfect palette for artwork and racetracks, it turns out.

I see children adapting and being joyful, and I feel hopeful about what I do not understand and know, for the first time in a long while.

November 2022

Hello,

I'm a longtime fact-checker and I saw the job posting for a staff writer/fact-checker for SciCheck and was interested to apply. I have fact-checked science books and edited Science News for Students for years, and I have written two series of myth-busting/science explained books for kids for National Geographic. I know I'd be a strong candidate for this job.

However, I was frustrated to read that all FactCheck.org staff must adhere to a Nonpartisan Policy. Participating in democracy through only voting and writing is not realistic for many journalists today because we have too much knowledge about subjects and/or too much skin in the game to sit out. This is an unfair and privileged ask that is not reflective of America's current reality, and is especially discriminatory against people who are not White or not men. Please consider what you are actually asking your staff to do --- to limit advocating for their and others' full human rights.

Please consider removing this requirement or amending its scope for staff. I would be happy to discuss this further if you're willing or interested.

Thank you,

Emily Krieger

Hi Emily. Sorry, but we are not going to change our policy. It is similar to policies of major news organizations, including the Associated Press and the New York Times.

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