Backyard Birds I
Musings on my feathered pandemic companions Geococcyx califonianus (Greater Road Runner) Attribution: Jessie Eastland, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Birds poop often and everywhere. They are the descendents of dinosaurs. Imagine billions of humongous feathered lizards roaming the planet. It took an asteroid to clean up the mess. Who or what will clean …
I’m Cancelling Social Media
I am writing to tell all my “friends” that I am suspending my social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn). Suspension is not deletion. I will revisit this decision in the future. There is some good. Social media has enabled me to keep up with relatives, friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances. I have reconnected …
There’s hope for Big Basin: the amazing fire adaptations of the coast redwood
Seqouia sempervirens is an ancient species that has survived for millennia, it has even survived modern California, it may even survive climate change. I don’t want to minimize the threat caused by the CZU lightning complex fire in the Santa Cruz mountains and Big Basin Redwood State Park. I do want to offer some hope …
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Touching the Past
I broke something the other day. I was rummaging through a box of memories (photos, tchotchkes). I was searching for a photo album in anticipation, or more accurately, dread, of a Zoom Reunion of a year abroad program on Kibbutz some 40 years ago. As I was pulling the album out of the box, something …
Life on Zoom
After so many weeks of life being led in a virtual world, I wonder how everyone is feeling about it. I for one have had enough.
A Loner’s Lockdown
I’m going on a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram lockup which I fear is going to be harder than the infrequent liquor lockups I use to go on when I was a bartender (note to self, get a hold of AOC and compare notes). I’ve been on social media way too much, I’ve posted way too …
Bearing Witness
My Mother, Margalit Beizer, before the May 1940 invasion of Belgium. On יומ הזיכרון לשואה תש״פ (Holocaust Remembrance Day in the year 5780) I bear witness. My mother, Margalit bat Mechel v Esther ז״ל with her parents and two younger brothers, fled the invading Germans from Belgium to Dunkirk, following the retreating French and English. …
My MAGA Moment
Trump was in the Coachella Valley in Southern California today with Larry Ellison who was hosting a fundraiser for POTUS at Porcupine Creek, the country club he owns in Rancho Mirage. Ellison is a co-founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer of Redwood City based tech giant Oracle. Ellison’s support for Trump is causing some …
A Christmas Day Walk
Families strolling, homeless camping, a drunk Santa dancing. It's Christmas day, 2019 in the City of Angels.
