Twenty-five years ago, when I was a 19-year-old college sophomore at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, I met a woman named Barbara. She was living in a nursing home. Fifteen years prior, when she was my age, she was in a serious car crash that landed her in a coma…
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…
Four years ago on a summer night, I stood in line at a Capitola, California, City Council meeting with my friend Laura Kasa, the brand new Executive Director of Save Our Shores. We were waiting our turns, along with dozens of other citizens, to share our allotted three minutes about…
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…
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…
