Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—Just like anything else that gets planted in the garden, new perennials seem to be so cute and innocent. They get even better as they mature. Some grow and spread to impressive proportions. Then...some perennials get to be too large. Some get overgrown enough to obscure their own appealing characteristics or other plants. Others get crowded enough to...

UNITED STATES—On a Tuesday night in July 1990, I finally met with Larry Karaszewski, a screenwriter I knew from USC. We had a lot fun in Drew Caspar's American cinema class, and thanks to Larry I wrote my first parodies for a publication called “Deep Focus” that was published by a group sitting around a table at the end...

UNITED STATES—Plants can inhabit nearly every climate on Earth. They live in hot and dry deserts, cold arctic regions, rainforests and just about everywhere in between. Plants seem to have it all figured out. Some even know how to live in our homes as houseplants, although they probably did not plan it that way. Most houseplants are tropical plants...

SAN FRANCISCO—A new company is helping to improve the travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles. SleepBus is offering rides from San Francisco to Los Angeles for $48 for a one-way trip. SleepBus’s founder and CEO Tom Currier spoke with Inc. Magazine and told them in an interview that, “It would basically be like you teleported to L.A. It would be cool." According...

UNITED STATES—In the weeks after the play’s successful run (one satisfying performance celebrated to the hilt), I showed rooms out and distributed three-day notices. “The agony,” I noted in my journal. The ecstasy was handing old good tenants, like Pedro and Tava at Estrella Avenue who were moving on and out and hopefully up, their deposit refund check. The weeks...

UNITED STATES—Anyone who has ever owned a cat knows that no one owns a cat. They do whatever they want to do, whenever and however they want to do it. They take orders from no one. If they decide to use a dry spot in the garden as their litterbox, or a tree trunk as their scratching post, it...

UNITED STATES—The apple red Subaru wagon with Nevada plates that expanded my world—there was the court circus, dunning tenants, showing rooms and it made possible taking part in “Maxtla,” a stage play of a doomed prehispanic King, pre-Cortez, pre-Spanish—even though it was presented in Spanishby the Bohemia Theater Group. To a great extend the group WAS Marta Esther Main,...

UNITED STATES—Lawn is the carpeting for our outdoor spaces. Like pavement or decking, it makes the space in or gardens useful for more than growing other plants. Since it is designed to share its space with us, we give it more ground space than any other type of plant. For what it contributes, most of us do not mind...

UNITED STATES—While I’m not a bona fide “foodie,” Portuguese comida made you pay attention. We joined an REI hiking trip traveling along the Rota Vicentina – the breathtakingly beautiful fisherman’s trail along the Iberian coastline.  Along with that adventure came great food in the small fishing villages we stayed in after our  a 5 plus hours on the trail. The Portuguese...

UNITED STATES—The second half of Otis Quigley Keefauver’s ambitious new Freud-inspired fictional spree begins promisingly enough. After defeating Great Britain, Germany annexes it to the Reich. Drunk on power, Hitler decides to have a plebiscite. At first no one knows what a plebiscite is, and they have everything fumigated. After the votes are counted, Hitler is ousted, peace breaks out...