Editor’s note: We’re having trouble with comments. Because we approve them before publishing, we need to be notified when they come in. We are not being notified. We can’t seem to fix this. We have not given up, we never give up. Meanwhile, please be patient, please? September 12 – 16, 2016 Autumn is […]
August 29 – September 2, 2016 Journeys bookend this week, while the middle was filled with grief and change, which are journeys of their own. On Monday, Sarah takes us to the rivers of British Columbia and the mysteries that bubble around and through them. It was as if the country itself murmured just beyond the edge […]
Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve found myself driving Highway 101 from Santa Barbara to Berkeley, a 320-mile route. The trip starts out along the ocean, then dips in and out of oak-dotted hills. Later, the road slices through the Salinas Valley and then into Silicon Valley. The last part is my least favorite—the […]
At three this afternoon, the sky above the mountains here was the kind of blue that signals a classic summer day. Thirty minutes later, we looked back toward the ridgeline to see a huge plume of orange-tinted smoke. As of tonight, the new Rey Fire has burned about 600 acres. Smoke is an unfortunate sign of […]
We came back from vacation earlier this month to find that someone else had moved in. I didn’t realize it at first—the house seemed just as we had left it, and we were busy emptying the car and starting the laundry and repopulating the house with the things we’d taken with us. It was later, […]
I did not know this when I moved here, but Santa Barbara is the giraffe equivalent of a rabbit nest. In the last four years, five giraffes have been born at the small zoo here. One more is due this summer. At one point, I thought this was adorable. I rallied my children to […]
I love that graduation speeches are now posted on the internet. Listening to them, the good ones, I can’t help but feel a little bit of that helium of opportunity and promise that I once had, in early summer, when I was the one who got to walk across the stage. One of my favorite […]
June 13-17, 2016 Christie thought she was from nowhere–until an internet quiz put her in her place. The novel Frankenstein, Michelle writes, “can be read a warning of the perils of human hubris and a brilliantly imaginative response to a global disaster.” Will we take its lessons and inspiration to heart in the face of our own monstrous creation, climate change? J-Shame: “It hits when your […]