Run DMZ

Deborah is beating me! (And Diane's already finished.) Every now and then I like to mix it up. I am not one for the Stairmaster, but with hiking season well underway, I needed to get in a good leg workout. So I convinced some friends to join me this morning to do repeats on the San Diego Convention Center stairs .  There are 100 of them to get to a platform with stunning views of the bay, Coronado bridge and Embarcadero Park, home in the summers to the San Diego Pops outdoor concerts . Facing the other way are stunning views of downtown. During weekday afternoons, you’ll see people going up and down the stairs doing repeats. And then you’ll see tourists giving these stair-runners a strange look. Whether you walk slowing or try to run up them, your quads and calves will be angry with you for a little while. We went when it was cool and uncrowded, as in 6:30 a.m. If you chose to go later, bring water. You’ll need it. View at the top of the stairs I didn’t do...

One of my favorite annual events is driving up to the formerly known SouthCentral LA and joining hundreds of thousands of other book lovers at the LA Times' Festival of Books. It used to be held at UCLA and now takes place at USC, and, yes, there were plenty of jokes at actress Lori Loughlin's expense but I don't think she was on campus to hear them. Almost every one of us as kids soak up as many books as we can and at one point want to be librarians or independent bookstore owners just so we can surround ourselves with the objects of our affection. Then we grow up and become something else. But the love of books remains. So, fortunately, does this April festival that features excellent authors discussing craft and content. And so many vendors it's overwhelming. That's to be expected for what is now the country's largest book festival. Here are some tips for how to make the most of the two-day festival . Getting there I admit I liked when the fest...

We tend to take photos for granted now that pretty much everyone I know has access to a digital camera, either theirs or someone else's. Sometimes I miss film cameras, not just for the quality, but for the mystery of the images a solid 35mm camera could produce. There's no mystery now. Just plenty of do-overs and flattering filters. There was a time not long ago when professional portraits were far more precious. Take this photo of my grandmother in 1937. I'm pretty sure this was taken for her wedding because she and my grandfather were still coming out of a brutal Depression and dirt poor. They would never splurge on such a luxury. I am, however, so glad someone did. The photo is as well preserved as she is. Happy 105th birthday today, Grandma! UPDATE: My grandmother passed away on May 8, 2019. She'd reached her finish line.

Directions seem so easy on paper. Or a smartphone app. Or a car’s navigation console. For as many times as our party of four had read the description for today’s hike, you’d think we would have gone the right way. Or at least recognized the wrong way at some point in the 3.5-mile journey. But no. That did not happen.  Ever since Deborah months ago read a blog post about a nice beach walk at San Onofre State Beach , we’d tried to schedule a Saturday morning trip. The problem was timing it with low tide and everyone's schedules. After three months of examining tide tables and calendars, today was the day. We drove about 45 minutes from our meeting spot in San Diego to the Basilone Road exit off the 5 North freeway and then worked our way first west and then south in the dark to an empty state park kiosk and parking lot. Along the way we passed a landmark every southern Californian recognizes: the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, better known ...

Unexpected storm moving into Poway this past Monday. If there’s one thing that people in Southern California love to talk about, it’s “weather,” our colloquialism for anything other than sunshine and mild temps. And we’ve had plenty of it this winter, with annual rainfall well above average and night temps prompting frost advisories. No one complains after years of drought had good citizens holding off toilet flushes and replacing thirsty plants and grass. Almost every hike I’ve planned the past two months has been canceled due to rain or the serious threat of it. Before you roll your eyes and think “wimp,” please know that we locals stay off the trails out of respect for fragile areas. And rules. When it rains, most public trails officially close. Not to mention I have a hard enough time staying upright going down steep dirt hills without the additional stress of slick mud underfoot. This has left many a weekend free to guiltlessly nest inside, where it’s warm and dry....

I love the music of Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading . Both are longtime, UK-based artists – true, uncompromising, one-of-a-kind artists – whose careers greatly influenced my own. No, I can’t sing or play a musical instrument or carry a tune of any sort, but their lyrics and arrangements have inspired my own prose and poetry over the past 40-plus years. They dare to be different and both have been blessed with critical acclaim.  Here’s the thing, though: I can’t run or row to either of them. Other than Bush’s 1985 hit “ Running Up that Hill ,” I can’t maintain a nice rhythm while working out. It’s even harder with Armatrading’s music. Try as I might, I tend to mentally stop and ponder or instantly reconnect with an old memory whenever one of her songs is playing. The exception: “ Drop the Pilot .” Maybe this is why I’ve migrated in recent months from listening to music while exercising to podcasts, which require their own level of attention. Podcasts are very in, as y...

In the 332 books I’ve read and recorded on Goodreads since 2007, only twice have I given a book a 1 out of 5 stars. Usually, if a book is that bad, I just stop reading and move on. But on two occasions I felt compelled to offer a different point of view from the prevailing opinion. One was upon reading the best-selling  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying  by Marie Kondo. I read the tiny book, took in the clothes-folding instructions and rolled my eyes at her personal story. I honestly thought the woman was a wee bit touched, what with talking to towels and crying over unkempt shampoo bottles. I also thought the KonMari Method was better suited for the smaller, minimalist homes of her native Japan than most larger U.S. dwellings. (Her book happened to hit about the same time as the tiny house movement and after we underwent a major downsizing .)   Then Kondo’s show hit Netflix this month and I decided to watch an episode. Which turned into five more b...