It’s my mom’s birthday today, so I thought I’d revisit this post about a time when she audited an astronomy class. This semester, she’s taking French. Bon anniversaire, maman. I’m not sure exactly where this story begins, but maybe it’s here: Sometime this summer, my mom decided to take an astronomy class. She had taken […]
Cameron
When we first moved into this house, we planted a fig tree in the backyard. It looked sad and scraggly for a long time—years, in fact. I would go over to the houses of friends who had fig trees in August, and these trees would be dripping with figs. I would ask how old the […]
It’s dark well into the morning now, and the dark is glorious. The kids sleep later, so I went for a walk on Sunday down to the beach. The sun hadn’t quite risen yet and I felt rested and settled by the quietness of fall. The sun seemed to rise slowly, too—plenty of time to […]
I first wrote about abalone in 2012, and thing are looking even worse than they did at the time. The abalone sport fishery in California has been closed until 2021. Researchers and abalone divers are starting to remove sea urchin, which have taken over the abalone’s habitat and munched away at kelp forests. Hopefully the […]
At the beginning of summer, my feet often feel tender. There is a particular stretch of asphalt between the university parking lot and the beach that is especially pitted, and the sharp dark bits of broken ground make me cringe even before I step onto the road. I often choose a different route to the […]
Confession time: I used to be a peach hater. What was wrong with me? It’s a question I often find myself asking, too. Part of it was the pit. When I first saw a peach cut open, I was a kid. It was summer, and I was at a swimming pool. The pit looked like […]
Each June, I revisit a post about June Gloom, a weather phenomenon that turns much anticipated summer sunshine into foggy despair. You thought you were safe this year, but no! Our gloom was so deep it started in May and lasted all day, every day. Now it’s July, and there is light at the end […]
The words you are reading have been typed by my own fingers, pressing little keys that make letters on my screen. If you really want to get into it, my keyboard is a little bit dirty. I don’t clean it often enough, and my kids use it a lot (I tell them to wash their […]