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…
Tag: …wow.
I mean “wow.” Just … wow.
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…
Brillat-Savarin’s Hot Chocolate
AS AUTUMN TURNS COLDER THE nights and days, a young (or old) cook’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of hot chocolate. And what better hot chocolate can there be than that featured on page 88 of the Leete’s Island Books…
Getting Back to My Roots
I FIRST NOTICED SOMETHING WAS wrong when I felt the hole in my upper right bicuspid. I didn’t know at first that it was a hole; I was scraping off some potato-chip detritus when my fingernail dipped unexpectedly. I must…
Why I Love: Her (30-year dance remix)
IT’S THE QUICKNESS OF HER wit. (It’s also her verbal skills in general.) It’s the way our eyes met when we first saw each other. It’s her deep appreciation of simple pleasures. It’s her courage. It’s her refusal to quit…
Live Long and Proffer
THE FIRST SOLO BAY AREA excursion I made after my mom and I moved to Walnut Creek in August 1977 was a trip to the aptly named Federation Trading Post, a Berkeley specialty store selling all sorts of Star Trek…
Are We (still) Not Men?
FORTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, my friend Ralfh came over to my apartment, held up an album cover, and said, “You have to hear this.” He slid out the vinyl disk, put it on the stereo, lowered the tone arm,…
First Graf: The Illuminati Papers
THE LATE ROBERT ANTON WILSON is perhaps the greatest influence on my life and thought since even before Rabbi Akiva. His spirit is sprinkled here and there throughout this blog like raisins in a cake. A prolific author, RAW (as…
Why I Love: Astronomy
It’s the quiet thrill you get when you first look through a telescope and see Saturn’s rings for yourself. It’s the hush before the planetarium show begins. It’s the ancientness of the constellations. It’s knowing that others before you, perhaps…
Night, Fog, and One Hell of a Bang
IF I HAD KNOWN THAT our galleon would collide with a freighter, I would have worn a life jacket. The time was February 1988. Through a curious series of circumstances, I had signed aboard the replica galleon Golden Hinde II…
Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things
IS G?D GRANTING FAVORS, OR am I just fooling my brain into higher functioning? That’s the question I ask myself every time I pray for either greater strength (read: endurance) or greater understanding. That’s about all I ever pray for[1],…
THERE’S (more) ‘ing WATER on MARS!
BACK IN 2008, THE METAPHORAGER gleefully spread the word that water, at least in trace amounts, had been found on Mars. Now there’s a(n apparent) pile of it. Using an advanced form of radar, scientists appear to have discovered more…