Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—Much of the color in the garden through autumn and winter is provided by foliage. Some foliage turns color as the weather gets cooler. Some had been blue, gray, gold, red, bronze or variegated all year, and just happens to get noticed more now that there is not much other color provided by flowers. There are a few...

UNITED STATES—Peet Boggs: So Nita stays behind to accompany Benjamin, the refugee with a heart condition? Jules Kaminsky: The film is about a hopelessly naïve artist/intellectual/philosopher caught in the jaws of cataclysmic events totally unequipped to deal with them. He still has one tool: his crystal-clear reason. That first night he planted himself in the clearing and wouldn’t budge, he...

UNITED STATES—Everyone is from somewhere. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be from California. Most of the various plants in our gardens, even if grown locally, are descendants of plants that were collected from all over the world. Most houseplants are from tropical regions. They perform well as houseplants primarily because they tolerate the sort of partial shade that...

UNITED STATES—Peet Boggs, the film historian and schnorrer manqué, interviewed filmmaker Jules Kaminsky many times starting in the mid-70s. The two first met when Boggs had a part as a scrub pine in Kaminsky’s long-awaited masterpiece, “Masterpiece.”  In the lore of unfinished film, this work is a holy grail, occupying a place equaled perhaps only by Orson Welles’, “The...

UNITED STATES—On November 8th, we will most likely know who our next president will be. For most of us, Election Day can’t come soon enough. To be sure this campaign season has been one for the ages. We’ve seen some of the most shocking political stunts and revelations about both candidates that most of us just want it to...

BERKELEY—Berkeley Video Filmfest kicks off its 25th year this Friday, October 28. The event will take place in the East Bay Media Performance Space with showings starting at 7:00p.m. The Berkeley Video Filmfest was first founded through the efforts of UC Berkeley filmmakers during the “independent underground cinema revolution” in 1960s. The Berkeley Video+ Film Festival was then created in...

UNITED STATES—There are many reasons why fireplaces and their chimneys are not such a safety concern like they were decades ago. Only a few modern homes are even equipped with them. Installation of a new fireplace is outlawed in many municipalities, even if a fireplace gets damaged by an earthquake, and should be replaced. Urban sprawl has replaced almost...

UNITED STATES—It was a Thursday afternoon and ostensibly my “day off.” I was refuging into a movie theater, the Vista, to escape the unfolding crime and consequences. Nobody knew how Moorehead was going to react to the discovery that his belongings had been surgically ransacked. From the bright spring afternoon, I glided into the shadowy recesses of the Vista, watched...

UNITED STATES—Shortly after germinating and producing their first few leaves, many seedlings start to produce foliage that is indistinguishable from the foliage that they will produce for the rest of their lives. Other plants might initially be outfitted with leaves that are smaller, thicker, or somehow slightly different from what will appear later. Then there are those that produce...

UNITED STATES—The sun can, at times, be so raw and unforgiving, it can give you a toothache. And the survivors of the dreams and plans stand stunned in the blinding blaze: what happened? what went wrong? They say we’re living in a desert, and the desert will make you crazy . . . A lot of things happened at Manhattan Place that spring....