I Made the Front Page of the Sunday New York Times Without Committing Any Crimes

And all I have to show for it is a MIS-ATTRIBUTED photo. The credit line has been bollixed.

The photo, of a seemingly undescribed oak gall I found in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn last year, is found below the fold in the lower right corner. The errors continue into the heart of the paper. There, I’m credited for a photo I did not take.

My photo is correctly attributed in the online version. I’ve learned that it was originally wrongly credited there as well, but one of the interviewed subjects caught the error and informed the paper of it. The online version came out a couple days previous to the print version.

This week’s Times strike may have had something to do with the botch-up. So management owes me, as well as, duh, the employees. (If the last dynastic owner was nicknamed “Punch,” is the current one “Judy”?)

It’s a good photo of a great observation. I was pleased when the photo editor contacted me for permission. The species — which doesn’t seem to be described in the literature — is evidently only represented on iNaturalist in one other location.

There are hundreds of species of oak gall wasps in North America. These tiny wasps force oaks to grow unique-to-the-wasp structures (galls) on leaves, twigs, acorns, or flowers. The galls protect and provide food for the wasp larvae growing inside them.

I am somewhat obsessed with these creatures and the fascinating relationship they have with oaks. Before he became really interested in human sexuality, gall wasp expert Alfred Kinsey was really into galls. His collection, numbering in the millions, is now located at the American Museum of Natural History.

I am an old-fashioned boy: the front page paper credit line would have been nice. It would have made my late mother proud.

[Photo above, not the one used by the Times, is, like all photos I use on Medium, my own work.]

UPDATE 12/21/22: A correction is issued. Ten (10) days later.