Twenty-one years ago, I did a very bad thing. This is my confession. On the Public Record lists the 1979 California Water Atlas as one of the essential texts, describing it thus: Try to get your hands on one of the old California Water Atlas, put out in the 1970?s. They’re real big, bound in …
SACRAMENTO – My friend Judy Liddell*, wise in the ways of bird travel, tipped me to be on the lookout for the yellow-billed magpie while I’m in northern California. She knows whereof she speaks. I saw my first one on the roof of my motel this morning as I ventured out for breakfast. They’re everywhere. …
It’s been a weird couple of days in Albuquerque. Last night, driving down from the foothills near sunset, I could see a thick haze building across the city, and by the time I got home I could smell smoke. Turns out it’s blowing up from a wildfire in southeastern Arizona (the Wallow, 106,000 acres at last …
What I did on my spring vacation: Lissa and I got the backyard train running (track needed a bit of post-winter sprucing up) We rode the big people train to Santa Fe I got new glasses We got far more work done to the car than I expected Slept in some, but got up early …
I’m excited to see my friends at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research moving to their new home. (The LTRR people were instrumental and hugely generous in helping me with my book.) But I’ll miss the hilarious stories associated with one of America’s great research institutions stuck inside a football stadium: Great science …
The Los Angeles Times reports that tragedy has struck the dinosaurs of Cabazon. Looming over Interstate 10 on the way to Palm Springs, they are the sort of cheesy roadside attraction that makes this country great, an icon of childhood road trips to the desert. It’s the place Pee-wee and Simone cemented their lasting friendship, …
Continue reading ‘C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about *your* big “But”.’ »
Once, an impossibly long long time ago, it rained at my house.
Out on assignment yesterday we found ourselves on the stretch of New Mexico Highway 60 that crosses the Plains of San Agustin, out by the Very Large Array, I got to thinking about long straight roads. Between Magdalena and Datil, 60 runs 23 miles of absolute straight, not a single bend or deviation: It’s …
In the elevator at Mazano del Sol, the retirement apartments where Mom and Dad live. Lady gets in with a fabulous cane – wooden, lightly carved and lovely bright paint job. Me: That’s a great cane? Does it have a story? Her: Got it in Old Town. Twelve bucks. It works. And she spryly strode …