“WHEN YOU’RE ON THE ROAD and somebody offers you something, take it.” This piece of learning was gifted me by a temporary chauffeur during my 1985 hitchhiking trip (detailed elseblog) who, somewhere on EB I-80 between Placerville and Stateline, asked…
Tag: places
Are we there yet?
Why I Love: Ancient History
IT’S FALLING ASLEEP HOLDING A copy of Herodotus’ The Histories or Gaster’s The Oldest Stories in the World. It’s the endless theorizing about daily life in a different context. It’s the observation that no matter what the era, people will…
The (Other) Giving Tree
BY A PATH IN SONOMA’S rustic Mountain Cemetery stands an oak tree bearing the creative goodwill of self-selected and diligent passersby. It began a few years ago, with three small figurines — a white winged angel, a faceless blue woman…
Why I Love: Restaurants
IT’S THE ATMOSPHERE. IT’S THE background music of cutlery-clinked plates and conversation. It’s the initial pleasure of sitting down at “your” table. It’s having a skilled and knowledgeable waitron. It’s eating what I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) cook for myself. It’s…
Our Own Little “Zone”
IF YOU WERE CONSIDERED A teenage weirdo in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Northern California’s suburban Diablo Valley, you could always find a place on Friday nights at an independent cinema-house in Walnut Creek, gathering with others of your tribe…
The #popscope Phenomenon
AFTER I BOUGHT MY OWN telescope (an Orion StarMax 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain with equatorial mount), I would take it out in the early evenings on the sidewalk in front of our building with a sign leaning against the tripod that read,…
Why I Love: Travel
IT’S THE NOVELTY. IT”S TRYING to see new places through the eyes of their long-time residents. It’s the road-trip soundtrack, whether CDs, tapes or new-to-me radio stations. If flying, it’s seeing the landscape from a different perspective; it’s the tiny…
Aside
Dear Ms. Garchik,
I just overheard the following remark while sitting in my backyard adjacent to Broadway, Sonoma’s main drag: Quoth woman to dog-walking man, “I hope in my next life I can be owned by you.”
I hope in this life you can use this quote for your daily column.
Be well,
Neal
UPDATE: Ms. G. replied, “I am going to save that one for annual romantic Valentine’s Day column!” Be on the lookout.
5 Thoughts: Grocery Shopping
1. IT USED TO BE CALLED “doing the marketing.” And it is one of my life’s favorite small pleasures. 2. This simple joy can probably be traced back to my dad and I doing it together every Saturday or Sunday…
Why I Love: Sonoma
IT’S THE HISTORY. IT’S THE diversity of food, from restaurants to markets to semipermanent food-trucks. It’s the out-of-state license plates ringing the Plaza on weekends. It’s the eight-acre Sonoma Plaza itself: families having picnics, occasional Tai Chi enthusiasts or Morris…
Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning
A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, Ann, Geronimo and I fled the then-largest wildfire complex in California history. We were voluntary evacuees who came home to find everything relatively intact, so our story had a happy ending. My niece and nephew-in-law…
Why I Love: Geology
IT’S THE SMELL OF THE rocks. It’s knowing what everything on the surface is sitting on. It’s the finding of hand-samples. (It’s also the finding of fossils.) It’s the divisions of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. It’s the appreciation of Deep…