“This country ain’t big enough for the two of us. So I’m giving you ’til sundown to get out of town.” ~ The Virginian

The Great Newt Commute is what happens on the way to the Great Newt Party. From the first winter rains through early spring, California Newts migrate from their summer homes to their winter breeding grounds — to ponds and streams where they mate and lay eggs before trundling back up the hills and into burrows
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We used to live down the road from a lightbulb store called “Lightbulbs Unlimited.” In Los Angeles. The shop had an illuminated sign. Naturally, of course . . . it was a lightbulb store. But for seven years, the shopkeepers never replaced the dead bulbs in their sign.
So for the entire time we lived in
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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone . . . including you wild and free turkeys among us.
(Wild Turkey portraits snapped in Berkeley’s Tilden Park)
Related: A Turkey-Friendly Thanksgiving

Old docks smell, this much I can tell you. You’ll catch a whiff of decomposing mussels and sea greens long before you ever see the old boards stacked, as these particular boards were, in the parking lot of the Berkeley Marina.
The Marina is renovating — replacing the old A-B-C docks with improved versions. And in
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I don’t usually ignore anomalies in my peripheral vision. They bring me to interesting things.
On this Berkeley day, something seemed out of place — that nagging oddity in my periphery. I turned and looked closer in the mud. Sure enough, there was an unusual outline in the creek bed.

As quickly as I noticed the
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If you venture into the off-leash area atop the hills of Cesar Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina, you’ll come upon a place of remembrance along with a worshipful look north, south, east and west. The solar calendar built on this site pays homage to Cesar Chavez, his legacy commemorated and
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