The Great Migration Outside My Window

by Kristine Mietzner

Eyelids closed, I postpone viewing the new day. I linger in dreamtime until a familiar honking breaks the morning stillness in Benicia, California, a waterside community thirty miles north of San Francisco. The world outside my window rests under the great Pacific flyway, the north-south path of North American migratory birds. 

Eyes wide open; I peer through the bedroom window in time to see Canada geese, a trio in flight, noisily bound elsewhere, calling to one another, beaks pointed, necks stretched; chests lifted upward, wings flapping hard. I track their flight over Southampton Bay, the cove on Benicia’s west end. The pale gray clouds of the marine layer blanket the opposite shore of the Carquinez Strait. This wide watery ribbon funnels fully half of California’s water drainage through a deep channel on its way to the Pacific Ocean.   

Cuddling under a soft, embroidered, cotton quilt, while I marvel at the waterfowl, Franz Kafka’s translated words come to mind.  

You do not need to leave your room.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, 

it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The universe blesses Benicia with a significant year-round presence of waterfowl—mallards, coots, the great blue heron, and snowy egret. Spring brings an upswing in activity: nesting and the annual migration of some birds to points north. 

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Close Encounters of the Chopstick Kind

by Richard Rossner

I fell in love with my wife, Rahla, when I realized how much we had in common, including the name George Van Tassel, the grandaddy of UFO-ology.

I remembered hearing him interviewed on a radio show about encountering aliens when I was growing up. But Rahla actually met him in the California desert near Twenty-Nine Palms. He showed her an alien landing site, which included a structure he built called The Integratron where aliens rejuvenated after a long interstellar trip; a UFO library and bookstore carved into the earth under the world’s largest freestanding boulder; and a luncheonette. She learned that Van Tassel had been Howard Hughes's partner, and they were going to build a landing strip for Hughes’s giant Spruce Goose fleet -- until the aliens showed up. They named the site Giant Rock Airport in honor of the aforementioned boulder.

Along with our wedding vows in Los Angeles, Rahla and I promised that one day we would visit the Integratron and Giant Rock Airport. 

We moved to Scottsdale after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but were forever driving back to Los Angeles. On one trip, we decided to leave early and fulfill our Van Tassel vow.

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BikerBabe: Celebrating Three-Quarters of a Century

by Nancy King

Recently, researchers wanted to test the effects of aging. So what did they do? They put young people in body suits that restricted their eyesight, hobbled their movement, and diminished their hearing. The measurements for the suit were based on the supposed physicality of a 74 year old. When I read this I was 74 and it made me so mad I decided I would celebrate my upcoming 75th birthday in an age-affirming way.I wanted to raise my proverbial finger at the media and people who worship wrinkleless faces and taut bodies. I arranged to take a five-day bicycle tour with a friend to the Sonoma wine country in California, north of San Francisco. Since I wasn t sure I could ride 45 miles in a day, or five days in a row, we trained, riding up and down hills in Santa Fe. Every time I huffed and puffed up a hill I thought of that suit and found energy I didn t know I had. Besides, I figured if I could ride 35 miles at 7,000 in New Mexico, maybe riding at sea level would be easier.

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Certified Extra Virgin

by Charmaine Coimbra

When the Los Angeles Times reported in July that approximately two-thirds of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) sold in California grocery stores isn’t so virgin after all, and that the problem comes from imported olive oils, I dashed to my pantry, flung open the door, and sighed.  My EVOO bottle was on the list of claims-to-be-extra-virgin-but-don't-believe-it olive oil. The alleged EVOO from Italy in my pantry apparently shacked up with cheaper canola, seed or nut oils—thereby losing any hint of virginity. Shame on my olive oil, and shame on Italy.

Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Kitehawk Farm in Atascadero, Ca.Double shame on me. One, the report went on to say, “No such mixing was found in the recent tests of products produced in California…” and, two, the nearby foodie-town-in-training, Paso Robles, CA, is home to over two dozen olive farms that co-habit with the burgeoning world-class local vineyards. Why did I not buy local?  I preach it, so my bargain EVOO shopping vs. quality EVOO shopping was about to change.

Last week, I slipped into the 7^th Annual Olive Festival in Paso Robles, and it was a voyage into the new world of an ancient food. Mostly family-owned farmers/producers poured samples of their oils for visitors to taste. Vendors supplied bread for dipping—but I watched as the purists went directly for the straight on sipping. Without a clue as to how oils are tasted, I chose the purist route.

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California Redux

by Sallie Bingham

There are times, and there are people, that we desire to erase even while we don't recognize why we want to erase them; so it is with a trip I embarked on some years ago, to the California coast.

by kevincole via Flickr (common license)The trip was supposed to be the sealing deal in a relationship that had quivered on the lip of "commitment"—that ethereal concept—for two years, embroidered with camping trips, lots of laughter, a stringent lack of money, and the absence of those family members or friends who might have demurred at the sight of a nice middle-aged East coast women of liberal persuasion and a carrot-haired, Boston speaking, child of old-ward Democratic politics who was making a living, such as it was, selling orange juice to restaurants out of his beat-up car. But so it was. And the trip, which he had proposed and which I had accepted with the lurking sense that something was to be decided, did decide something: that we couldn't go on. And so we didn't. Not, it seems to me now, out of a fundamental problem, but because I couldn't really see the coastline we were passing because of my preoccupation with the failures, as I saw them, of the relationship.

           

Now, fifteen years have passed in the breezy way that great swaths of time pass at this time in my life, and I'm returning, with one of my sons, his wife, and their four year old boy to the same coastline, the itinerary, designed by my beloved daughter-in-law, covering the same ground, stopping at the same places:

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Hidden Venice Beach: A Walking Tour

words + photos by Don Mankin

Someone once wrote that if you tip the United States on edge, everything that’s loose will slide down to Los Angeles. I would add, if you tipped Los Angeles on edge, it will all slide down to Venice Beach.

The best place to see all those loose odds and ends is the “boardwalk,” which has no boards but lots of asphalt. That is the Venice Beach known far and wide – the low rise mix of vintage buildings and radical modern architecture lining one side of the boardwalk and the vendors, entertainers, and champions of obscure causes with provocative signs -- “meat is murder” and “circumcision is worse” -- lining the other. And then there are the people walking along the boardwalk in outfits they would never wear at home.

Few visitors stray far from the boardwalk. Those who don’t miss the best show of all -- the other attractions that make Venice Beach the largest spontaneous outdoor theme park/playground and one of the most interesting communities in the world. To discover the hidden highlights of Venice Beach, just follow this easy, leisurely walking tour. It should take about three hours or more if you want to shop, linger, and eat, or less than three if you are in a hurry.

THE BEACH

The first stop is the beach, which begins just a few yards west of the boardwalk and extends for over 100 yards to the water’s edge. On the way to the beach, stop and check out the new skateboard park at the foot of Market Street and watch the boarders sail into the air, frozen in mid flight against a dramatic background of broad sandy beach, crashing waves, coastal mountains and big sky.

From here, you can take off your shoes and shuffle on the sand to the water. Most days the beach is almost empty except for a few sunbathers, surfers, or meditators gazing at the sailboats gliding off shore or, at the right time of year, dolphins playing in the breaking waves. Look south and you can usually see the outline of Santa Catalina Island in the distance; look north and you can get a better look at the background that framed the soaring skateboarders -- a beach curving around a vast bay all of the way to Malibu and beyond. Behind that, the Santa Monica Mountains taper down to the ocean. When visitors tell me that they think that Los Angeles is ugly, this is where I bring them to change their mind. I have never failed to do so.

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