Entries for date "August 2011"

The Story of Adelita

In 1992 I met Adelita for the first time. I had no idea how old she was or where she was from. But there was this mystique about her. Something special. Sometimes you can just feel it. Her skin was brown, her eyes big and black. We spent summers together…

Summer of the Hominids

This is a kind of a film review. Although I'm an evolutionary biologist by training, not a movie critic. And, truth be known, I've seen just three films this summer. Five if you count streaming Network (1976) andRichard Pryor Live On The Sunset Strip (1982) on Netflix. So, let's just…

Our Left Coast

In the summer of 2003, my family joined a dozen other Californians as we trekked and camped along the coast from Oregon to Mexico. We traveled 1,800 km on foot in 112 days. It remains one of the highlights of my life. When I heard the writer and photographer, father…

Why Do We Love To Stare At the Sea?

What is it about the way the ocean moves, reflects, glimmers and glows that mesmerizes and transfixes us? Earlier this summer I gathered a group of leading neuroscientists, ocean explorers, advocates, communicators and creative people together in a room at the California Academy of Sciences to begin to answer this…