My partner’s WordPress blog was hacked. Like graffiti artists, the hackers left behind a visual calling card – Arabic text and their group name. Clearly, they were proud of their handiwork. Luckily, my partner uses justhost, which responded quickly to her cry for help. Within an hour, in fact. They restored an earlier version of …
This past week, the Bay Bridge finally reopened after a piece of metal came away from a section of the bridge that had been repaired Labor Day weekend. The Bay Bridge when I choose to think about – and I try not to as often as possible – is scary. Personally, I think falling metal …
I recently heard a report on NPR that said dolphins like to use their flippers in an effort to propel jellyfish through the air in what seemed to be an act of play. Soccer, except with jellyfish as the ball. Unfortunately, jellyfish don’t generally survive the humiliation. Researchers in Wales discovered this surprising, never-before …
Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are in the news. The two massive co-op housing complexes on the lower east side of Manhattan were sold to a development group for something like 5+ billion dollars a couple of years back. Apparently a highly leveraged purchase. Of course with the crash of the financial markets, the …
Went to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this weekend, a free three-day music festival in Golden Gate Park for those of you unfamiliar with the event. There’s a lot I could write about – Lyle Lovett was amazing, singing his old stuff from Pontiac with the Large Band backing; Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris and Old Crow Medicine …
My friend Caroline gave me the book Meditations of John Muir: Nature’s Temple for my birthday. She said she saw it soon after reading my blog post cathedral about a visit I made to Muir Woods. The book pairs writings of Muir’s with quotes or passages from other writers, thinkers and texts. The last chapter …
I’m old. There’s no getting around it. I turned 47 today. As you can imagine, I’ve had many birthday experiences before, but I’ve never had the onslaught of a social network birthday. I received more birthday wishes through facebook from people around the country than I ever have in my life. Somehow, they all picked …
Played pool right after work at Thalassa, a downtown Berkeley bar, with my friend Shelby Monday night. I’ve done this a couple of times recently. There’s a very mixed age group of patrons at this pool hall. There are older men, most of whom have the tweedy air of Cal professors, alongside younger 20-somethings – …
Re-read a much-heralded short story by Tobias Wolff, Bullet In the Brain, today. My book group for its next selection is having each member choose a short story and as a group we’ll read them all. I used Bullet in the Brain in a summer writing program with high-school age students years ago and thought …
I was talking to my friend Erin the other day about the last place I lived before coming to the Bay Area. This is what I said … Right before I moved out west, I lived in a small rural town in Western Massachusetts. The town is called Leverett. Population roughly 1,600. I lived in …