I’m in India for the second half of October, working with my team of intrepid tech writers. The Divali holiday is coming up, which in scale and importance is kind of like Christmas and Thanksgiving put together, and it seems that people start preparing for it pretty early, because the traffic this week hasn’t been [...]
Catching up on some of the summer activities: In the middle of August, on an impulse, we grabbed the last empty spot at the Henry Cowell campground up in the hills above Santa Cruz. We spent the weekend there hiking and goofing off, and then descended on the beach boardwalk on Monday for some intensive [...]
We got a much earlier start this morning — left the house a little after 9:30 to meet my aunt Anna and cousins Maija and Max. Anna and Max were dropping Maija at the bus station to go back to Boston. We met them on 54th St. (near the Red Parrot, the first salsa club [...]
Mary and Diogenes are just back in New York from Taiwan, where Diogenes picked up a prize in the Taipei print and drawing biennial. Now he is clearing out his studio on Lexington and 103rd for a push to finish new material for a show in San Francisco in the spring. I went with them [...]
When in New York do as New Yorkers do. So today we walked down Central Park from Mary and Diogenes’ place in East Harlem, stopping to marvel at the rocks shouldering up out of the ground, the Alice in Wonderland sculpture, the pond where Stuart raced, the promenade of poets, until we reached Wollman rink [...]
Enormous thanks are due to the indispensable Stephy, who stood ready to port my weblog updates from the road during the last seven days. It turned out that Pacific Bell’s much-advertised nationwide roaming service is (surprise!) not quite what it promises; as soon as we were out of California I was unable to get a [...]
(Posted 9/18 due to technical difficulties) The Los Angeles train station is the most full-on temple of Southwesternness I’ve seen. It’s worth a train trip to LA on its own. Decorous Mission tiles, outrageous deco fittings, gracious palmy gardens: you feel exactly like Cary Grant blowing in from New York. Even Amtrak’s efforts to make [...]
The first thing you notice about train travel is the leisurely pace. Amtrak’s train 11 moseyed into Emeryville about 3 hours late this morning. We spent the time pleasantly at the Borders bookstore across the street, buying the new Bob CD for me and a copy of the Beatles’ Revolver for Laura, who has been [...]
This is a test. In two days we will start our big train adventure all across this mighty land. First we are taking the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, where we will inspect the La Brea tar pits under Laura’s expert guidance. The next day we will get on a sleeper car and not get [...]
I like the bridge, but I love the tunnel.
We’ve had a little bit of a campathon, going out the last two weekends in a row after not camping for years. The weekend before last we were up in Marin, in a redwood forest about 10 miles from the ocean, with a bunch of families from Laura’s preschool. Last weekend we were in the [...]