Archive for April, 2007
CARMEL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA—The key, you see, is to take your foot off the break as you head downhill into the abyss and to trust absolutely the worlds of Justin Demayeo when he says: “You feel that?”
Yeah, I felt it all right—a deep-throated Gremlin of a sound that more or less defines the Land Rover Driving Experience here at the luxe Quail Lodge Resort and Golf Club. We—the fiancée, me, and Justin—have more than 100 acres to play around in before we hit the outer limits of the Quail Lodge, one of three such off-road Land Rover extravaganzas.
Continue Reading April 28th, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO—Now you see it—and then you see it again.
You go to the “Picasso and American Art” exhibit here at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and what you see is the face of genius so obliterating that lesser geniuses can do little more than fall in line.
Max Weber, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollack, and so on: they tried to keep up through the 20th Century that Picasso, the ineffable Spanish artist, did not stride upon the world of art so much as squash it. Starting with Cubism, Picasso not only re-imagined the human form but the human subconscious while he was at it. In so doing, he also re-defined what an artist could be.
Continue Reading April 28th, 2007
The off-season is upon us. A glorious time when you can walk down the sidewalk and not see a single person for blocks. In the past week, however, the tourist mobs have been replaced by machinery - beeping, thumping exhaust spewing machines. This led me to ask myself a simple question, “Which do I prefer, machines or tourists?”
Continue Reading April 27th, 2007
We hear a lot about global warming lately and the resulting doomsday scenario in which the human race will face dislocation, famine, disease and possibly extinction. The projected timeframe for this catastrophe is within 50 to 100 years. But there is a much more dire emergency facing us that barely anyone in the mainstream media or politics is discussing…Peak Oil. This is the phenomenon originally known as Hubbert’s Peak after Geophysicist Dr. M. King Hubbert. His prediction in 1956 that U.S.oil production would peak in about 1970 and decline thereafter was scoffed at then, but his analysis has since proved to be remarkably accurate.
Continue Reading April 26th, 2007
We pride ourselves on being a cutting edge, educated community poised to lead the country by our enlightened behavior. Yet as Roger Marolt’s Friday column pointed out, some are falling into the “impossible-to-ignore group of perpetual antagonists,” or as Roger so aptly wrote “I have become what I never imagined I would-a sour local.” Arguably Aspen is still the best place anywhere to live, without serious problems; little crime/pollution/poverty/real congestion/environmental degradation etc. Our challenge is to manage our prosperity and desirability, problems of affluence and not of dire need.
Continue Reading April 25th, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO--I take this idea of booing a sports god with more seriousness than usual here by the Bay because of what my Daddy’s mommy told my Daddy a long time ago: “Never put it in writing, son. They’ll only hold it against you.”
Amen, Grandma, may you rest, but you never stopped my Daddy from writing and writing and writing some more. In all, in a life with millions of words, Frank Conniff wrote exactly one sentence that survived him: “What a town. They cheer Khrushchev and boo Willie Mays.”
Continue Reading April 24th, 2007
Attached is the campaign material for BEST (Better Efficient Safe
Transportation), the group supporting bus lanes. It includes the names
of all the mayoral candidates except Bonnie Behrend, who says on her web
site: "I am not in favor of 4-laning."
Continue Reading April 24th, 2007
For no apparent reason, with no pattern discernible, I had a day whereby I saw man for what he really is.
What I saw was grace under pressure, and not in any Hemingwayesque sense—not with bullets flying or the beloved dying in childbirth or the fisherman in a boat against the most elemental forces of nature.
What I saw was something far more moving and eloquent and real: I saw men under pressure who refused to succumb. As always in stories of this sort, this story is about a woman and more than one.
Continue Reading April 22nd, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA--I remember the first Earth Day like it was the last one because I don’t remember any other one in between.
It was 1972 and my high school class had a brilliant but occasionally bizarre biology teacher name Edward Camara—he was known as “The Doctor”—who was way ahead of the curve on all this. We left campus with plastic garbage bags that were probably not biodegradable but we plucked trash from the planet that day like it was better than cash.
Then we, us, you, all of us, more or less forgot about the whole things until sometime after 9/11. The politics of ecology all but disappeared. Nobody cared or at least not much at best. The world went on. We baby boomers boomed. We got fatter if not happier. We all bought SUVs (though not me). We ate Rain Forest Crunch from Ben & Jerry’s but paid it never no mind.
Green was gone.
Continue Reading April 22nd, 2007
After stonewalling, Bush finally succumbed and authorized an “official” 911 investigation chaired by that impartial seeker of truth, Henry Kissinger. Who quickly stepped down in order to avoid “conflict of interests” and was replaced by the director of oil giant Amerada Hess. Senator Max Cleland was the only member honest enough to speak out. “I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that.” He promptly resigned.
Continue Reading April 22nd, 2007
Previous Posts
